The Things Put Away
by static-disturbed
Summary: Beth suffered unspeakably at Grady for 8 months. Daryl almost lost it all to the saviors. Aaron can't sit still. Rick wants to mend his family. Maggie knows only two angels like her daddy and husband could have brought Beth back to them. This is the story of how Beth and Daryl heal together and learn to be a part of a family again. Bethyl and friendship/family love.
1. Chapter 1

AN: This is my first Walking Dead piece. Also, I have been out of the fanfiction game for at least five years so please be patient with me. Ok, so a few quick notes about this story's universe: Daryl and Carol never saw that car that night and Beth has been at Grady the entire time since. I have taken liberties with Beth's Grady experience, making it somewhat of a rougher experience than we got on the show. Each chapter of this story will reflect on Beth and Daryl's reunion from a different character's perspective. The timeline of the show always confuses me so for my purposes, about 9 months have passed between the night at the funeral home and present day. Also, please note the M rating is for language and mention/description of non-consensual sexual activity. Eventual Bethyl!

* * *

Daryl

 _"Bone deep, that's where the ache lies."_

The sun had peaked over the horizon sometime just in the last hour, Daryl Dixon stood in the shadow cast by the steel wall that stretched around the borders of Alexandria, Virginia. Somewhere, on the other side of the barrier, birds were chirping; the quiet little chirrups that could only be coming from a nest of freshly hatched eggs. The wall protected their community from the undead who would eat their flesh and from the very much alive who would take everything else they had to give; it was less successful against the later. He was on the safer side of the barrier, staring at the skeletal remains of three burned out cars, some of the last of the wreckage from the final blowout with the Saviors the month prior. He chewed a thumbnail, eyed the stain of dry, clumped brain matter that spattered the driver's side head rest of one vehicle. He couldn't remember who's it was, wasn't sure if it was an ally or a savior or one of their own. The deaths had all meshed into one long movie that played in his head on a loop.

With a flap of wings a large robin, presumably the mother of the little cluster making the fuss over the fence, landed on the hood of one of the cars. Daryl watched her watch him. Just last winter he would have resorted to shooting an arrow thru the little things heart and eating her like a feral dog, just to make it through the day.

"Sorry," he grumbled, "ain't got nothin' for ya. You picked a hell of a time to go reproducin'."

Nature was, after all, still running its course. The birds and the deer and the bugs and everything else didn't know the world had gone to shit. Spring was settling in and despite the corpses dragging their way around it, the Earth was doing what it always did. The bird blinked at him curiously before disappearing just as quickly as she'd landed, back over the wall.

"Interesting choice of conversation partner, considering you won't give the rest of us more than a grunt."

Usually Daryl was good about knowing when people were around, especially when they were approaching him. He hadn't even heard Aaron's footfalls. Admittedly he was off his mark, had been starting sometime between watching his best friend get his head beaten in with a baseball bat and the two weeks he'd spent having his sanity pushed to the limits by Negan.

He glanced at the other man, taking note of his perfectly pressed shirt and khakis and offered him little more than a nod. What was left of Alexandria's residents were mostly still sleeping, but he wasn't surprised to see Aaron up and at em' and clear eyed. With his neatly curled hair and clean shaved face and immaculate clothes Aaron somehow always looked like he was headed out to an office job for the day. Daryl scowled when he realized he was being regarded with an odd expression.

"Wha?"

Aaron smiled, his eyes twinkling with amusement.

"The haircut."

Daryl had almost forgotten. Forgotten that he'd stood in the powder room of Rick's house last night with a pair of silver sewing sheers and then an electric razor, working in the mirror until he resembled the person he'd last been in the first weeks following the end of the world.

"Tired of it gettin' in my face," he shrugged. Daryl let the rest die on his tongue. Like how ever since he'd spent an endless cycle of nights and days in a windowless cell, living with his own piss and shit and forbidden to bathe or change his clothes that he couldn't stand the feel of his own body or the dirt that always seemed to be accumulating on it. That the feeling of his hair sticking to his forehead every time he sweat had begun to make his skin crawl. That he'd taken an hour-long shower when they'd finally drug their selves home after the final battle, washed Negan's blood from under his fingernails and out of his hair but he could still see it there when he looked in the mirror.

"Suits you," Aaron assured but from the way his lips were itching to turn upwards Daryl had a feeling he may have done more of a butcher job than he'd thought. He simply squinted in Aaron's direction before turning back to the automobiles before him. He crouched down to open the steel toolbox sitting at his feet and retrieved a heavy wrench. He liked Aaron enough. He wasn't family, not a brother like Rick or Glenn, but he considered him to be tough and reliable and generally his company didn't make Daryl want to slither away into the woods. Sometimes though, the other man just didn't know when to leave well enough alone.

"So anyway, I spoke to Rick last night."

And he still hadn't left.

"We agreed it was time to start scouting again. We're not going to be able to sustain or protect this place properly without a higher population, about time we started trying to fill these houses again."

Most of Alexandria's original residents were dead, give or take a handful including Aaron and Eric. " _I wouldn't let us in_ ," Glenn had quipped once, when Aaron had found them starving and hopeless back in Georgia and they'd still been suspicious. There was a long grocery list of ways Alexandria had done good for them, but he knew they hadn't done much good for Alexandria. He popped the hood of the car closest to him and began fiddling around inside.

"Thoughts?" Aaron pressed, "I'm leaving tomorrow, probably be gone for at least a week. I thought you might want to come with me, try to get back to normal."

Daryl grunted, dropped his wrench back into the toolbox with a thud that made Aaron jump and retrieved a flathead screwdriver in its place.

"Normal checked out a while ago and ain't coming back," he grumbled, "I'm good, rather stick around here. Wanna scrap these cars fore' we move em out of here, stock up on any reusable parts."

Aaron's expression told him that he knew it was just as much of a bullshit job as Daryl did.

"Look Daryl, I know things haven't been easy for you recently. I just… when I met you, you believed in good people, like I do, believed they were still out there. We can't let what happened, can't let Negan, take that from us."

Daryl's hands moved expertly inside the heart of the vehicle like a surgeon. He gave Aaron a steely side glance.

"I didn't let him take shit from me." A voice inside Daryl's head scoffed. Negan may not have taken his life, or his dignity or his freedom. But he'd taken other things, like sleep and the ability to feel at ease in the company of others; although he'd never had much of that even before the dead started waking up and trying to eat everyone.

"Fair enough," Aaron sighed heavily, pinched the bridge of his nose, "Look, we can't just hunker down here and say forget everyone else out there, that's all I'm saying. There are good people out there, I have to believe that or none of this means anything."

The birds outside the wall were still chirping, louder now and Daryl wondered if their mother had managed to find anything to feed them yet. He remembered the long winter after the farm, when Judith was growing inside Lori and they lived a daily mission of finding nourishment for the unborn child that Daryl now loved like his own blood. Aaron's words danced through his brain, synchronizing with a memory he kept tucked safely where he could visit it nightly. He didn't realize he'd checked out, was staring blankly in Aaron's direction.

"What?" Aaron ran a hand across his face as if there was something there he couldn't see, "what did I say?"

Daryl shook his head, ducked his chin and tucked himself back under the hood of the car.

"Ain't nothin', just reminded me of someone."

"Your brother?" his slightly less than welcome companion questioned, probably because it was the only person from before he could remember Daryl ever mentioning, even briefly during the limited conversations he'd forced out of the other man while they were out on their excursions.

The noise that came out of Daryl's mouth was half amused. Merle probably could've authored a book just full of things that would offend Aaron.

"Trust me, you wouldn'ta been invitin' Merle Dixon over for spaghetti dinner with you n' Eric." He got back to work, twisting washers and screws lose and depositing them into his pockets. When he realized that Aaron wasn't leaving, was still staring at him expectantly, Daryl grunted. He came out from under the hood, leaned both hands against the frame and spoke with his eyes on his boots.

"Used to be a girl…Beth… she was always going' off something about good people too. Bout' havin' to believe they were out there."

"Beth…Maggie's sister," the other man clarified, remembering hearing her name spoken in mournful whispers. Daryl made a noise in his throat that he assumed was a confirmation. "I never actually…Maggie said they didn't know if she was alive or not, what happened to her?"

"I lost her," Daryl's voice remained steady but his knuckles were white where they gripped the car, staring into the hood as if it was an endless ocean. "All that hopin' bout people…was people who took her, livin' breathin' ones."

He didn't glance at Aaron but if he did he would have seen the small O of realization the other's man's face fell into.

Daryl scrubbed a callused hand over his face and swore in the darkness of his own eyelids he could see those big blue saucers of eyes scowling at him for being so short with the kind man trying to befriend him. "Hell she was half the reason I agreed to go out on those runs with ya in the first place, thought maybe we'd…", he trailed off, "she woulda liked you."

"You loved her." Aaron didn't ask it like a question, just declared it kind of quiet and surprised like an ah-ha! moment. Like a nervous, trembling, hopeful "oh" whispered across a candle lit dinner table.

"Don't matter now," Daryl dismissed, slammed the hood of the car shut.

"I think loves about the only thing that does matter anymore," Aaron insisted quietly. Daryl shook his head, dropped his screwdriver and walked away.

On the other side of the wall away from Aaron and the other faces that would be waking up soon and following him with their eyes as if he might dart or cry or lose his fucking mind at any second, Daryl knelt in the dirt. He used the white buck knife he still wore strapped to the back of his belt, the one he'd found on the road the night he lost her, to dig; twisted and turned it into the hard ground until he produced a handful of squirming earth worms. He followed the sound of the baby birds cries to one of the dogwood trees that lined the south side of their community. He dropped the worms unceremoniously into a pile near the base of the tree and fell back to rest against the steel wall, one foot out in front of him and the other pulled up to his chest. When the mother bird landed cautiously some feet away, he followed her hesitant hop towards the worms, knowing good and well she watching him. He didn't move a muscle, barely let himself breathe as he observed her use her beak to pick up and transport the meal to her babies. Daryl held Beth's knife in one hand, worrying the handle between his thumb and pointer finger while he gnawed at a nail on his other hand.

The chirping from the nest above began to quiet just as he sang, barely audible under his breath and nothing close to how it had sounded coming from her.

 _"Oh your old hometowns so far away, but inside your head there's a record that's playin'. A song called hold, hold on. Babe you gotta hold on."_


	2. Chapter 2

AN/ Warning: There is mention of rape in this chapter. Also, any and all reviews/criticism are welcome and wished for!

* * *

 **Beth**

 _The longest mile is the one that leads back home._

When Beth Green was seventeen, her art history class had taken a trip into Atlanta to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art. For the majority, her class was made up of kids she had known since nursery school at the church where their families all worshiped on Sundays. If they had stood in the right spot on the road, the skyline of the city looked close enough to touch. Still, they were farm kids. The hustle and bustle of the city had felt like a different world. Mostly because they were for the most part, unchaperoned. They could walk the museum on their own in groups and later, sit in a restaurant downtown on their own. People were there on business lunches, chatting furiously on cell phones while they barely touched their food. She could remember distinctly feeling very adult, very independent on that day.

She sat with Jimmy and her best friend Kaylee at lunch. Jimmy had reached for their hands to say grace and she could remember pulling away, could remember being embarrassed, _we don't have to do that_ _nobody's mamma is watching_ she'd hissed. When Jimmy had looked at her with something like shame she was embarrassed to be embarrassed. They were only an hour and some change drive from home, but it had felt like another world where she could be someone else besides Maggie Green's kid sister, good old' Hershel's daughter. Her and Kaylee had discussed college over lunch, making a pact to apply to only schools in the city. _You're just gonna leave me behind like that huh?_ Jimmy had teased, but there had been real hurt in his voice. She had pacified him, promised of course not, fallen asleep on his shoulder on the school bus ride home.

That trip had been on a Friday and by the next Wednesday school had been called off and the televisions were only broadcasting emergency newscasts that later turned to black screens. She couldn't get ahold of Kaylee, who lived in town on Main Street. Jimmy had turned up at their door, begging her father to let him in. He'd sobbed to her daddy, collapsed in their entryway. His parents were sick he insisted, had turned into monsters.

Jimmy was dead now. Her daddy was dead too. Maggie probably. Glenn. Rick. Carl. Judith. And she'd never made it back to Atlanta, at least not the way she'd imagined. Now, the napalm coated skeleton of the city was somewhere to her back as she trekked the woods, her sore ankle dragging just slightly behind her other. The work boots she'd taken off a dead man's body were too big, she'd stuffed them with whatever she could find, scraps of cloth and trash to help keep them in place but they still made for an inconvenience. Dawn stopped allowing her shoes after work hours, as well as giving her a brand new jagged scar across her chin, following her third escape attempt. The bottom of her feet still stung where they'd been torn up as she ran barefoot down the deserted Atlanta street. She would've given anything to go back to the place where she'd just been Maggie Green's kid sister.

The woods were thick on either side of the road. She hadn't seen a walker in miles, but she kept white knuckles wrapped around her knife anyway. It was a sturdy kitchen knife, not as convenient for piercing the skull of a walker as a buck knife, but it had been the easiest one to steal from the cafeteria. She was taking a risk sticking to the road, but it was easier to keep track of her location. The hazard was higher of the Grady cops finding her out in the open this way, but It had been four days since she'd been gone and with any luck they'd given up on the search for her when they found Noah's body in the road. She'd left it there, just as he'd told her to do after he begged her to end it all for him before the fever could set in. Besides, the road was the only lead she had.

" _I'll meet you on the road."_

A voice in her head, one that sounded a lot like Dawn, told her that she was being stupid. There was nothing out here for her anymore, her people were all dead. It had been almost eight months since that night at the funeral home. At Grady, they'd left her restrained to a bed for days before they would speak to her. Her stomach had felt like a hallow canyon, her head spinning from dehydration and hunger. The leather strap pulled her wrist, that she could feel was at the very least sprained, at an odd angle that sent constant lightning bolts of pain down her arm.

This was all part of the process of course, to push her to the point of need. Of needing them, needing their food and care. They'd asked her to describe in detail, any people she had been traveling with and where she had come from. The first time they asked nicely, laced in false charm and concern. When she lied for the third time that she'd been alone, a man named Gorman twisted her bad wrist until finally, she cried that they were all dead. Her wrist got the treatment again when he declared simply that she was a liar, they knew she'd been traveling with a man because she'd been crying for him every time she fell into a pain induced sleep. One the fifth day she broke, told them she'd come from a prison with one man. The prison was overrun with walkers, the man was most likely gone and he wouldn't be sticking around to look for her. She'd lied about the last part of course, but they'd finally let the doctor in to tend to her wrist.

The next day Dawn had come to see her, to release her restraints and to tell her gently how much she appreciated Beth's honesty, they'd gone to the prison. _Looks like it could have been a nice place once_ , Dawn had mused with an unhidden amusement, _and you're probably right about that man, there's no sign of him out there, alive or dead. Can't blame him, wouldn't want to stick around for a liability like you. But don't worry, we'll keep you safe now._

On the way out of Atlanta she and Noah had stuck to back alleys and cutting through business lobbies to avoid being seen. She'd snagged a backpack from a long dead walker's body. She could feel the weight of Gorman's side arm inside it, bouncing lightly off her back as she walked.

The bent wrist had only been the beginning of a long list of things Gorman had done to her. ' _It's best just to let him have what he wants'_ the doctor had told her, before offering her a supply of birth control pills. For 234 days she envisioned ways to kill him and every single day she fought him. Most days the fight was enough; she made enough noise, enough fuss, hit him hard enough to bruise his ego. Some days though, it just wasn't enough. Some days she spent inside her head, singing to Judith or listening to her daddy read bible verses or sitting beside Daryl on a hilltop, while Gorman grunted over her body. Sometimes he fell asleep after, half on top of her as if anything about the encounter was intimate. It was these moments though, that gave her access to his keys, to his gun.

Noah had a family he needed to get back to and he was adamant that Beth would be welcome where he came from. She didn't have the heart to tell him she wouldn't be continuing all the way to Virginia with him. She had a man to track down, a conversation to finish.

The hospital had been stifling. At least out here, even if she was alone, she could breathe. It was almost pretty, almost peaceful. She had about three hours time to walk before the sun started to set, about three hours time to get closer to the last place she'd seen Daryl Dixon alive.

And then, with the suddenness of a tidal wave, the sound of an engine crept into her eardrums. It was still far enough to be behind the bend she'd come around not long before, still far enough that they wouldn't have spotted her yet. Dropping to a crouch, she ran into the thick woods that lined the road and didn't stop running. She moved as fast as her wobbly ankle and too big boots would allow her, not daring a second glance back towards the road. There was a chance it wasn't the men from Grady, but it was just as great of a chance that it was. It wasn't until her ankle gave out from beneath her that Beth stopped moving. She hit the ground with a thud, a tree root squaring in the center of her spine and caused her to yelp in pain. She'd fallen at the base of a tree and she laid there, letting her breath come back to her. She didn't hear the walkers, didn't even see them until the trio were all but on top of her. It was then that she noticed her knife had fallen from her hand during her fall. She flopped her body over with an ungraceful thud, sliding her backpack off her shoulders. She kicked the closest walker with her good leg, retrieved the glock from her bag, aimed it and pulled the trigger.

When the three corpses finally lay still around her, Rick's voice echoed in her brain, something about needing to conserve ammo. She checked the cartridge of the gun, dismayed to find it almost empty. And then, something rustled in the bush ahead of her. She scurried for her knife, determined not to waste another bullet on whatever rotten former person came dragging out at her.

Walkers didn't hold the hands above their heads. They didn't wear pressed khakis either.

"My name is Aaron," the very much still alive man before her introduced cautiously, "I want to tell you about my community."


	3. Chapter 3

AN: I hope anyone following this story is enjoying it! I am really having a lot of fun writing it. Reviews would be lovely!

* * *

 **Aaron**

 _Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable._

Eric was going to lose his mind. If the tingle on the right side of his face meant anything, Aaron knew he'd be sporting a black eye by the time he met back up with his partner. His other half had been against this trip in the first place, insistent that bringing more strangers thru their doors was the last thing their weakened community needed. Even more adamant that Aaron needed to stop putting himself in harms way. When he found out that Daryl wasn't going to be accompanying him this time Eric had flat out put his foot down. " _Jesus, what's the point of us having walls if you never stay inside them? You haven't almost died enough in the last four months? Or do you have a death wish?"_ It was sweet that Eric wanted him to be safe, but sometimes the worrying drove Aaron up the fucking wall. If there was one thing Aaron couldn't stand, it was being underestimated.

His mother had always called him soft. Declared it openly when he was still in grade school, " _You're too soft Aaron, that's why the other boys don't take to you at school, they can sense it."_ He'd been too young to realize she was referring to his homosexuality with a generic blanket term just to avoid reality. His father was absentee and she took it upon herself to harden what she saw as soft edges. Oh, and how he'd worked to prove her wrong, how he'd resented her. He never saw himself as soft; never conceded to any bully, never shied away from any fight brought to him and when he did lose, he took his licks and walked away with his head held high. Now he wondered, if she'd known what she was doing all along. Thought maybe it wasn't that she had a problem with who he was, but she knew that there would be others that would. And maybe it was worth if it he hated her as long as he wouldn't be a victim. It was a nice thought at least, because his mother was dead and there was no sense in walking around being mad at a dead woman. Especially when there were thousands of other dead women trying to eat him. Especially when she'd made him tough enough to still be alive when so many weren't.

Sometimes he just couldn't take Eric's doting, he was bred for tough love. He loved him of course, loved him more than anything left on Earth and for that reason he accepted the worrying. Loved him enough to agree to letting him come along with him on the scout, loved him enough to trust that Eric wasn't soft either and that he was ok on the other side of the county where he was also out looking for life. He was going to be pissed about the black eye though. Aaron had watched the girl for a good five hours, trying to determine if she was alone or on her way back to a group. She'd reminded him of a wounded doe, hobbling forward relentlessly but with knees that looked like they were going to buckle towards one another at any moment; clearly injured and exhausted. Except she'd never fallen, she'd even picked up her pace, executed three walkers without as much as a flinch. And damn she had a strong right hook.

She'd apologized very sincerely, soft and southern, after she hit him but he realized she'd used his moment of shock to retrieve her gun and aim it at his head. She'd instructed him to throw her his pack and to lift his shirt. And then, just as honestly, apologized again for having to point a gun at him.

"It's ok," he assured, "I understand. I've been out here too. I know my word probably means very little, but I'm not here to hurt you."

She was a tiny thing; hallow caves for cheeks and big blue eyes that while being kind, were keeping precise track of his every movement. She was fair, although he could barely tell under the layers of mud and rusty dry blood that coated most of her exposed skin. Long blonde hair hung in a ratty braid down her back, tendrils that had broken free and frizzed with sweat curled around her forehead and ears. He found it odd that she wore medical scrubs, or at least what had once been. They were paper thin and too big on her underfed frame. They'd been blue once he thought, but now they looked more like a butcher's apron.

Now she sat across from him on a rock, used her fingers to scrape what was left of the sauce from the inside of the canned pasta she'd taken from his bag. She'd asked first, if he could spare one. She'd already taken his gun and tucked it into her waistband at that point, still held her own but not in position to fire anymore. Yet, she'd still asked his permission before using a knife to crudely open the can.

"I'm sorry again about hitting you," she said as she put the can down on the ground beside her and looked at it almost longingly.

"There's more in the bag," he offered, "please take it." He could remember how it felt to be hungry.

"You have to save some for yourself," she declined with a shake of her head.

"I have plenty to eat at home," he promised and felt a little guilty. They didn't have plenty, not anymore, but they did have enough. Which was more than she had. "And don't worry about the punch. Like I said, I know how it is. You're strong, it's a good thing."

The way she tilted her head curiously reminded him of the golden retriever he'd owned before, when he would usher out a command and she would just blink up at him skeptically. A dog trainer he was not.

And then, feeling like a mall kiosk salesman about to begin his big spiel or a Jehovah's Witness knocking at dinner, he took a deep breath. It had been a while since he'd done this.

"I come from a place called Alexandria, Virginia. We have a gated community, steel walls actually. My job, in the community, is to scout and recruit new residents. That's why I'm here now, I'm on a scouting trip."

She did not look impressed, but something had peaked her interest and he could tell she debating on whether to trust him with what she was about to indulge.

"I had a friend," she began hesitantly, "I lost him…a couple days ago, he was bit. But he was from a place in Virginia, a place with walls. His name was Noah, did you know him?"

How he wished he had, but he couldn't remember a Noah ever in his time in Alexandria and there'd never been any mention of one before him.

"I'm sorry," her face fell at his apology, "but there are other communities in Virginia like ours. We have good relationships with them, trade and labor, even family members that live in separate communities and visit one another. We could ask around, when you go back with me, he may have come from one of those places."

Something soft and happy and hopeful settled in her face and Aaron just couldn't shake that something about this girl made him feel useful again. He'd felt idle and unneeded and lame in the time following their last battle with the Saviors. Everyone was still in recovery mode, but he wasn't good at rest. Before the world had ended he used to go to scary places full of scary people to try to save good people. He wasn't sure if the life they lived now would be considered the during or the after, but nothing much had changed about his line of work and he'd needed to get back at it.

"So there's more people, survivors…like you? Good people?"

He'd killed ten men alone in the last three months. That was just counting face to face and not the damage done with explosives. The people he lived with, broke bread with, would die to protect, had done the same. They were good though, the greater good Rick liked to say.

"We only associate with likeminded communities," he assured, "Soldiers, fighters…but yes, good people, people who help. Lots of them."

"I knew it," her eyes fell shut for a moment and she smiled to herself. But then when she opened her eyes they were filled with something but it wasn't what he was looking for, it was a steely determination.

"If it's not too much trouble, could you ask around to your friends about Noah. If you happen to find his family please tell them that he fought for a long time, and he helped a lot of people. And when he died he wasn't alone, and he wasn't scared. He was ready. Tell them you met a girl on the road and he'd saved her life, helped her escape a bad, bad place."

"You can tell them yourself," he insisted gently, "when you come back with me."

She stood, bracing herself for a moment before putting weight back on the ankle she'd been dragging.

"You've been kind and I appreciate it, the food and all. But I can't come with you, Georgia is my home and there's people here I need to find."

His mind retraced the last four days he'd spent in the Georgia backwoods. Every sign of life he'd stumbled upon was without the actual living part; abandoned campsites, crashed and bloodied cars.

"I really hate to tell you this but I've been all over this part of the state this week…you're the first actual living human I've come across."

"There are more people," she looked away and made work of gathering her pack, "but they aren't good people. They took me and they'll take you too. You should move on from these parts soon."

Aaron squinted, as if his eyes were suddenly adjusting to the sun.

"Someone took you?"

Something stirred in the back of his mind.

The girl's shoulders seemed to turn inward. She handed his backpack back to him and then his gun.

"You shouldn't be out here alone, trust me. They aren't like you and I."

"Well then you shouldn't be out here on your own either," he maintained, "they won't be able to find you in Virginia. If they did we'd protect you."

"Like I said," she slung her backpack over her shoulders, "I have to be here, I have to find someone. And they won't be able to take me again, I'm ready this time."

There was a familiarity to the inflection in her voice, to the kind-heartedness with a sprinkling of stern-ness that he couldn't quite place.

"You can always come back, we don't make anyone stay where they don't want to be. I go on these scouting trips often, I'd even come back with you when you're healed. We can look for whoever it is together. You'll be safe there."

"Walls fall," she sighed gently as if she was letting him down easily, "It was nice to meet you Aaron."

She turned her back and he felt something like panic rise in his chest.

"Our walls have fallen," he agreed to her turned back. He and Eric has discussed this at length before they made the trip. They would provide complete honesty. No more grandeur fairytales about a better world with blow-dryers and school and spaghetti dinners. They would tell it like it was, that bad people had come and tried to take what they had. But only because they had something so wonderful to want. "We rebuilt them. We always rebuild. There is no certain safety left in this world, but we have family, community. And we're strong together."

When she half turned back to him there was something nostalgic on her face.

"Like I said, thank you Aaron. You've given me a gift just by proving that I was right about good people being left in this world."

Aaron blinked, memory receptors in his brain going off like car alarms. All at once the familiarity to her voice, even something in the shape of her face started to make sense. He could feel his heart to start to beat out of his chest and an almost light headed feeling settle behind his eyes.

"At least tell me your name, in case one day you find yourself at our gates."

She turned and took a pace into the woods, her knife in one hand gun in the other, before answering his question over her shoulder.

"It's Beth."

He couldn't remember the last time birthday, or Christmas morning or good news phone call he'd had in his life, but this felt a hell of a lot like he remembered those feeling.

 _I lost her_ Daryl had said. Not Maggie lost her, not we lost her. His face had been so empty, so shattered. Aaron knew, the missing puzzle piece to his friend was standing right in front of him, walking away.

"Greene," he called out and finished for her, "Your name is Beth Greene."

She stilled, the arm that held her knife went slack at her side. When she finally turned to face him there were tears lining her eyes.

"I know who you're looking for and they aren't here. They're in Virginia, with me. Rick, Carl, Michonne, Judith, Maggie…Daryl."

Beth fell to her knees in the dirt and sobbed. The emergency flare Aaron lit exploded into the air with a flash.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN:** I promise after this, no more dragging things out! Haha. I'm really enjoying being able to delve into all of our major characters while still always coming back to Daryl and Beth at the end. I really hope everyone reading is enjoying it too! The next two chapters will go back to Daryl and Beth to get to all the good stuff!

* * *

 **Rick**

" _If any honor existed in war, it was in fighting to protect others from harm."_

Rick knew it had been early afternoon when he'd laid beside his daughter in the bed, attempting to get a nap out of the toddler. _You are my sunshine, my only sunshine_ he'd hummed, not nearly as melodic as when her mother once had to Carl, and then whispered it as her eyes fluttered shut. The sun had been filtering in through the blinds and he remembered staying beside her after she dozed off, watching the light dance on her eyelashes. Now he woke to the warmth of a small palm resting on his cheek, chubby fingers tugging at his beard. The room had dimmed, still lit outside but with the sun starting to fall below the horizon.

He hadn't meant to fall asleep, but he seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Sleeping that was, as if the last two years and some change were finally catching up to him. Or maybe it was just that he finally felt at ease enough to close his eyes. Judith lay on her side facing him, the thumb from her free hand between her lips and her downy baby hair awry on her head.

"Hi baby girl," he whispered, freeing her fingers from his beard and kissing her hand before playfully pretending to bite into it, growling like a bear and nibbling her little fingertips. The 14-month-old erupted into a fit of giggles, rolling onto her back and squealing in delight when he blew raspberries on her arms.

"No, no dadda," she screeched in feigned fear, yet clapping her hands in excitement.

D _adda._ The word made his heart swell, like it was a water balloon stretched over a faucet and someone had just turned on the water. There were days he didn't know if she'd ever even grow to remember him. Days where he'd made peace with the fact that it was ok if she grew up without him, if she was able to grow up because of him. Now though, things finally felt different. There was civilization, society, allies. The saviors were gone. His children had an actual chance at a future, he had a chance to watch them grow old and rebuild the world. At least a much better chance than he'd been able to calculate on the day Judith had come into the world at her mother's sacrifice.

There had been days in the beginning that it had been hard to look at her. It wasn't anger or jealousy as he suspected some of the others might have thought, just grief. He saw Lori in her every single day, her eyes and her smile and even the way she looked at him. He saw Shane in her too, sometimes just in a quick little expression and sometimes more. Despite how that sometimes stung like a pin prick, Shane was the reason he'd still been alive to wake up in that hospital, the one and only reason he wasn't eaten to death in his coma. Rick had decided some time ago that that was how he would choose to remember his partner. And should he ever decide to tell Judith about the man who made up part of her biology, that was the story he would tell her.

She was his though, through and through. Nothing would ever change that. Now he couldn't stop looking at her.

He sat up, ran a hand through his hair and watched contently as Judith rolled back and forth on the bed, which was just a mattress and box spring on the floor, amusing herself thoroughly. The room was mostly bare, much of the perfectly designed décor that had hung on the walls and furnished the place when they first arrived in Alexandria had been taken by Negan. Over the last month, they'd managed to make sure everyone had a bed again, at the very least. He and Michonne's clothes were folded neatly in piles in the corner of the room, some of Judith's toys laying haphazardly around. Eventually furnishings would come but things like that fell low on the priority list. One of his two main priorities scooted herself to the edge of the bed and he lifted her by the armpits to help her to the floor. Judith made quick work of gathering up her collection of large Legos that littered the floor.

Rick stood and stretched the sleep from his bones, cracking and popping in places he hadn't even known could crack. As a collective they carried scars and healing injuries like any battalion of returning soldiers. Some of them had made it out worse than others, some of them carried most of the scar tissue on the inside. Healing would come, Rick had to believe that. His people would find a way to be whole again. He crossed the room and retrieved his gun from where he'd left it, on the high shelf inside the walk-in closet. He strapped the utility belt around his waist.

Things were safer now, yes. Negan and the Saviors had been eliminated. There was an alliance drawn up, between Alexandria and four surrounding communities. Maggie and Carol sat at the helm of decision making in two of those. None of that changed the fact that they were living in what could be considered a post-apocalyptic world. And they'd felt safe before, at the farm, in the prison. He would never be caught like Deanna in a fairy-tale. He would never be caught without his sidearm again, be it walkers or men who came for them.

His daughter would never see him without a gun, besides moments like a shared cat nap. When Carl was a toddler Lori had always been uncomfortable when he wore his gun in the house, preferred he take it off and lock it up as soon as he arrived home. Rick thought of Carl now, probably a better shot than him if he wanted to be honest and like his father, never without his pistol on his hip. Judith would learn to shoot one day, when she was old enough. He lamented on what Lori would think of that.

She would understand, he was sure of that. She'd be proud of the job he was doing, with both of their children. Their sweet little Carl had taken more than his brunt of unfair breaks but he was still standing, and standing tall at that. Rick hoisted Judith onto his hip and excited the room, started to descend the stairs. His footfalls echoed into the silence of the home, he wasn't surprised Carl wasn't there. Staying inside the house had never been his son's specialty.

Michonne had left to hunt with Daryl that morning and as much as the only thing that could have made he and Judith's nap better was for her to have been there with them, he was glad Daryl wasn't alone. The way his brother had been hanging back, always on the outskirts of things, reminded him of long gone days at Hershel's farm. They all felt the ache of Glenn's absence daily but he knew Daryl carried an unwarranted guilt. Not to mention the lingering effects of his time spent under the Saviors thumb. They weren't demons Rick knew how to slay for the other man, wish as he might. Michonne had been elated when he'd agreed to have her join him and Rick hoped she could bring some light out in him. She seemed to have that effect on people.

He was just settling Judith into her booster seat at the kitchen table when there was a knock at the front door. The knocks continued with a rhythmic pattern and Tara was still knocking as if she was air drumming when he pulled the door open. She smiled at him, dropping her hand to her side.

"Afternoon sleepy head," she greeted, noting his mused hair with a gesture of her eyebrows. Rick ran a hand over his face and smiled back.

"What's going on?" he asked just as Judith began to fuss and he gestured for Tara to follow him inside. She was on his tail as he entered the kitchen.

"Eric and Aaron are back and your presence has been requested, quite frantically might I add, at the church."

Rick scowled. They weren't due back for at least three more days from their scouting trip.

"Are they ok?"

"Both looked in perfect condition as always," Tara rolled her eyes light heartedly and then shrugged, "I don't know, Aaron just insisted I come relay the message."

"Do you mind?" he gestured to Judith and the younger woman grinned wildly.

"Are you kidding? Time spent with Judge Judy is always time well spent."

Rick chuckled a little and just nodded as way of thanks before heading towards the front door. He assumed Aaron had found some prospects out on the road. He'd agreed with Aaron that it was time but the idea still made him a little wary, trusting outsiders again was going to be a hard bridge to cross over.

He made quick work of the short walk from his house to the front gates, which they'd recently double fortified.

"Lock em up behind me," he called to Sasha who was on the second watch tower. She tipped her hat at him and descended the ladder to latch the gates behind him once he was out on the road.

One of the newer RV's they'd recently acquired from the savior's large cache of automobiles was parked halfway down the road, near where the church stood. The small chapel wasn't inside their walls but they'd made it an unofficial meeting place, mostly for the early days of their budding alliances when the communities were still feeling one another out. Eric and Aaron were standing by the door of the RV, speaking quietly to one another. When they saw Rick approaching Aaron broke away and met him with quick strides at the front doors of the church. He was practically bouncing on his heels.

"What's all this about?" Rick questioned as way of greeting while accepting and returning a handshake from his friend, he took note of Eric disappearing back inside the RV. "Something happened on the trip I should know about?"

He couldn't place the expression on Aaron's face. Rick had gotten to know the other man well and trusted him whole heartedly but he'd never seen Aaron look quite so anxious.

"Yes, yes something happened," Aaron took a deep breath and released an incredulous chuckle, "And she refuses to come inside the gates until she can speak to you."

Rick felt his eyebrows come together in confusion. He wasn't sure if that nap had really left him disoriented or if this was as peculiar as it seemed.

"She?"

Aaron didn't let him question any further. He pursed his lips together, gave Rick a nod that seemed to be trying to prepare him for something and opened the door to the church.

By some miracle, the stain glass windows that stretched from the center of the Church walls to almost the ceiling had been left intact. Blues, yellows and reds reflected from them in the blonde hair of the girl standing at the end of the aisle. She had her arms wrapped tightly around herself, eyes closed, chin lifted towards the cross that hung above the alter, praying.

Like a fast-forwarded home video, hundreds of memories played in his mind in an instant. He had to lean forward and brace himself on the edge of a pew.

"Beth?" he was surprised at the sound of his own voice, choked with tears. Her body tensed and then a fragile smile stretched across her face at the sound of his voice. He watched her mouth a silent 'amen' before her eyes fluttered open and she turned to fully face him. Her arms fell to her sides and she raised her shoulders and dropped them, her chin quivering in that way hers and Maggie's both did when they were trying to hold back tears. Rick forced himself back into a full standing position and opened his arms. Beth stepped into the hug, trembling.

"I can't believe you're here," Rick pulled away and put a hand of each of her shoulders, had to feel the flesh and bone to prove this wasn't a dream, he wasn't still napping back at the house. "We thought…you're really here, Beth I'm so sorry."

Sorry for leaving, sorry for not trying harder, sorry for writing her off. A million regrets were beginning to rain down on him at once.

Beth hadn't said anything yet, smiled at him through her tears though and swiped at them with the sides of her hands.

"She didn't believe me," Aaron teased gently from his spot behind them. Beth let out a little puff of air and sniffled.

"Did so" she insisted, hoarse but grinning and looked back to Rick, "I just had to see for myself, before I walked into anything."

"I should have known she was one of your people right away," Aaron pointed to his own face and the fading yellow bruise around his right eye, "gave me the Rick Grimes special."

He felt a small surge of pride. That was their girl. Aaron began to rattle off the story of how he'd found her in the woods, alone but surviving like only someone built for their community could. That's when he'd started to put the pieces together. As Aaron spoke Rick really started to take in the girl in front of him. It was Beth Greene, no doubt about that, but the physical changes he documented made his chest hurt and rage with anger all the same.

She'd clearly cleaned herself up as much as she could with a limited supply of bottled water in the RV. Her skin had a layer of muddy brown, the after math of scrubbing dirt and blood from it. He could plainly see where her face had been split open and crudely stitched back together not once, but three times. She wore the scars across one eyebrow, her cheek and chin. Beneath his hands were sharp shoulders in what he assumed was Eric's borrowed white t-shirt; she was all skin and bones. One wrist was wrapped tightly in ace bandage, theirs, and he could tell by the way she stood that she was favoring one leg or ankle. Her bare arms where the shirt sleeves ended were a mess of cuts and bruises.

She was watching him as Aaron talked, her eyes so big and sunk into her thin face, watching him take in her scars and injuries.

"We have to get you inside," he insisted simply, "where you belong. We have to get word to your sister."

"She's not here?" Beth looked at Aaron, worry written all over her features, "I thought you said…"

"Maggie's not in Alexandria, not right now. She's at the Hilltop, one of the other places I told you about," Aaron assured and smiled encouragingly, "She's kind of the boss there actually."

Rick felt his stomach knot, he had no idea if Aaron had told Beth that Glenn was dead.

"She can be here in half a day once we get word," Rick assured her and then once again moved to the door. His heart was pounding a mile a minute and he felt frantic to get Beth safe inside their gates. There would be a lot to tell and a lot to learn. He wanted Hershel's youngest daughter to be comfortable and safe for both.

"Rick wait," she pleaded suddenly and he turned back, found her once again with her arms wrapped tightly around herself, "Are there a lot of people...maybe I should just stay out here for a bit. Or in the RV."

"Beth, you belong inside. With us. I promise everything will be ok. We don't have to see anyone you're not ready to."

She was contemplating to herself, still glued to the church aisle. Rick remembered the girl he'd met on the farm, the girl who'd sobbed in the grass when her mother emerged from that barn as a flesh hungry corpse. The girl who'd bounced back from that to become their nursemaid, their songbird, Judith's protector and nurturer when he'd been too weak to do it. Who had had the nerve to try to take that girl from them?

Beth opened her mouth to finally say something but then Rick watched her face shift at something over his shoulder, lips trembling, eyes softening and brimming with fresh tears and her shoulders wracking with a heavy, longing sigh. She looked as if weights had been released from her shoulders, as if she might float through the ceiling.

The hadn't closed the church doors behind them. The sound of something heavy hitting the ground had Rick spinning on his heel. Daryl had let his crossbow go limp in one arm, thudding on the floor. His breathing was heavy, his eyes wide, the sound of strangled tears starting to reverberate from between his lips. Blue eyes bore into blue eyes and Rick was certain if he were to raise his hand into the path between them he would be burnt from the intensity.

"Beth?"

Tears streamed down Beth's cheeks, leaving clean little trails in the dirt on her face and revealing the pale flesh beneath. She took two small, hesitant steps towards him and stopped.

"Daryl Dixon," she sighed before hiccupping through a sob, "did you miss me so bad?"

Daryl had fallen to lean against the door jam and he sniffled, something that could have been a chuckle if he weren't weeping rumbled in his chest and he nodded his head.

"Yea."

Beth took two more steps, long strides this time and threw herself against him. Daryl lifted her easily off the ground, her legs wrapping around his waist and her head burrowing into the crook of his shoulder as if she was trying to crawl inside his skin. He cradled her skull with one large hand and sobbed things into her hair Rick couldn't hear. Rick met Aaron's eyes across the aisle and nodded at him, there was no way to thank the other man for something like this. For bringing Beth home.


	5. Chapter 5

AN: Longest chapter yet! I honestly really hate writing dialogue so hopefully it comes off ok in this. Next up we have Beth and then Maggie. Thank you so much to those who have reviewed and or favorited!

* * *

 **Daryl**

" _What matters most is how well you walk through the fire."_

He'd never felt at home in church. When he was a kid, a dirty faced little backwoods boy in his brother's too big hand me downs and bare foot most of the time, the preacher from in town had come knockin' at their door. His old man had chased him off immediately, standing on the porch with his third Budweiser of the morning in one hand. Daryl had been about five, come around the side of the house pulling a rusty red wagon that he used to fill up with odds and ends and walk up and down the road all day long; anything to stay out of the old man's way. The old preacher had stopped and smiled at him, pitifully when he replayed the memory as an adult, unscathed by his father's cruel words, " _Everyone is welcome in the Lord's house son, you should come see us sometime. Maybe we could help get you some shoes huh?"_ Merle was an angry teenager then, one foot already out the door and when Daryl had pulled his clanky wagon down the drive to where his brother was fiddling inside the motor of a truck that had appeared on their property, Merle had laughed in his face. _"Gotta have money to go to church dumbass, that's all they really want, money. Preachers probably a pervert anyway."_

When he was older, his mother dead and Merle gone and his old man meaner than ever, he would go in town to trade scrap metal and cans for enough money to buy some baked beans or a loaf of bread. He'd stopped at the corner just as Sunday service let out one day, three dollars in his pocket and a half-smoked cigarette he'd found tucked behind his ear. By then the hand me down jeans, all Merle had left behind, sat high on his ankles like highwaters, the tennis shoes with holes in the toes. A woman in a floral dress who had just been laughing with the preacher on the church stairs had looked him up and down and grabbed her son's hands to pull him behind her as they walked by him. That night he'd thrown a rock through the church window and stolen two bottles of wine from the rectory. His old man had almost been pleased with him that night, until the wine drunk left Daryl pinned to the closet door with his father's hands around his neck.

He'd asked for help in a church once, when they were looking for Sophia. Some good that had done. Later, they'd turned Gabriel's sanctuary into a slaughter scene. Although what Gabriel had done at the beginning, locking his parishioners out, could have made it cursed land long before they ever showed up.

Church, faith, had never done him any good, until now. He'd had this dream before, more times than he could count. Her skin felt so warm though, buried in the crook of his neck.

"I ran for a day and half," the words spilled out, guilty and apologetic and almost begging, "I promise I did Beth. I waited on that road…I searched up and down for that car. I looked, I ran and ran," he didn't even know what he was saying but she was nodding against him and then releasing her legs from his waist. Her foot stepped on his and she was real; Beth was standing right in front of him like a resurrection.

"How?" he stuttered, tongue feeling too big for his mouth. It had been eight months since he'd watched those tail lights disappear, since he'd ran for two days straight after them. Eight months since he hadn't passed a car without looking for a white cross painted on the back. Eight months of feeling like half the man he'd realized he could be, sitting there at that table with her, eating peanut butter from the jar.

"I…I was in a place," Beth explained, searching for words, "I escaped, it took me a long time but I escaped. Aaron found me." He held her face in his hands and touched every part; from her exposure chapped lips to her eyebrows. Her eyes were saying so much more to him than her words. The scars on her face were saying it all.

Daryl turned to Aaron. The other man just smiled softly at him, reached out to grasp Daryl's shoulder.

"It's all that matters anymore," he reminded gently, recalling their conversation from the week earlier. Daryl nodded and let his hands fall back to his sides.

"Aaron told me," Beth explained up at him, "you were taken too."

He nodded, shrugged, unconcerned with any of that for the time in months. He swore his heart was beating outside his chest. She'd come back to him. A state away and almost a year between them and here she was, standing under that big cross looking up at him.

"I'm ok," he promised and she wrinkled up her nose just slightly, acknowledging that they both knew it was a lie.

"We should take this inside the gates," Rick interrupted softly, "It'll be dark soon."

"If you don't mind," Beth turned to Rick, "I'd kind of like to stay in the RV tonight. I'm excited to see everyone I really am, could just faint thinkin' about getting my hands on Judith. Just kind of need a pause, I don't want to be exhausted and overwhelmed when I see them."

Daryl knew what she really meant. She was scared. Scared that they would see it on her, change. He felt it too.

Rick didn't look happy with the idea but he accepted.

"I won't tell them you're here yet," he assured, "when you're ready."

"I'll go get you some clothes," Aaron offered, "I'll leave them inside for you. Your gun and knife are where you left them." He took a step towards Beth and hugged her, "Welcome home."

It wasn't until Aaron had left and shut the door behind him that Beth turned to face Rick. Daryl had always been impressed by her posture, how someone so slight could stand so tall.

"Rick, I need you to do something for me," she insisted, her voice transforming from a nervous whisper to purposeful in an instant.

"Anything," Rick guaranteed. She looked at Daryl for a moment and he knew he wasn't going to like whatever she was about to ask. She crossed her arms over her chest, gulped down something in her throat the way she always had before she said something particularly stubborn to him. When she was about to call him on his shit.

"I need you to ask me the questions, ask me the questions before I come inside your gates tomorrow."

"Ain't no way," Daryl interjected, talking to the side of her head because she was still staring at Rick, "those questions ain't for you. They're for new people, outsiders."

Beth had more right to live beside them than some others who resided inside those gates. She'd always had a place there, waiting for her.

"Daryl's right Beth," Rick put a hand on her shoulder, "whatever you had to do to get back here, it doesn't matter. You got back to us, that's what matters."

"I am a new person," she insisted sternly, directed at Daryl and then her voice softened, "at least part of me is."

"Naw," he shook his head, "you're Beth Greene." He poked a finger into his chest, "I know exactly who you are. You're good and you're strong and this is your home now."

Beth smiled at him, relieved and grateful but apologetic, because she wasn't going to let it go.

"Please Rick," her voice was pleading now, begging and it made Daryl's stomach knot, "I have to tell it, and I need to get it out now. It's just easier this way."

He could tell by the way Rick sighed before nodding that he was conceding to Beth's wish. Daryl clenched his jaw and tried to prepare himself for whatever he was about to hear. Listened as Rick asked the first question, gently prodding how many walkers Beth had killed.

"A lot," she took a deep shaky breath, "not counting before, I mean since I lost Daryl. To get out of the city…it was a lot."

The three of them collectively held their breath before Rick finally asked the second question.

"How many people have you killed?"

She believed in good people, made him almost believe it too. And a very selfish part of him didn't want to know what this world had done to her in return for her faith. He reached out though, took her hand in his and her long, delicate fingers slid between his and squeezed.

"Two."

Nothing in Beth's posture slumped but something in her voice did.

Rick's question was a hoarse whisper.

"Why?"

"One was Noah, the boy I was traveling with from Grady….that's what the hospital was called, that's where they took me, a hospital. He…he got bit. He begged me to stop him from turning."

"He was your friend," Rick clarified softly, "you did the right thing for him, if it's what he wanted."

Daryl knew that Rick knew, they all knew, that never made it any easier. They'd all killed loved ones, saved their bodies from returning to rot and walk and eat in an endless cycle. That knowledge didn't make firing a bullet through a friend's skull any easier.

"The other one was a man, from Grady." She turned to face Daryl and her lash line was overflowing with slow, fat tears that rolled down her sharp cheeks. "They're not like us, not good people who've had to do bad things. They are bad people who do bad because they like it. They take advantage of the weak, they come out here and find survivors at the end of their line. And then they make them feel indebted, use them for whatever they can get out of them," for the first-time Beth looked at the floor, "and I mean anything. He was the worst. I fought him, I fought him all the time but sometimes I just wasn't strong enough."

Apologetic; she apologizing and Daryl felt sick.

"You're always strong enough," he assured, fighting the animalistic rage that was boiling inside. He would burn the whole place to the ground.

"I wasn't gonna, we were just gonna go, but he caught me and Noah. I had no choice. They would have killed me, I was out of chances. And that's what they do when they can't get anything out of you anymore, they euthanize you like a dog, or beat you to death to make an example to the others, or they throw you down a trash shoot to the walkers. I had no choice."

"Ya got nothin' to be ashamed of," he promised, pulling her into his arms.

"Nothing," Rick agreed, "You're strong Beth. They didn't know, they had no idea where you came from. You're a survivor. I'm so sorry we couldn't find you."

"I didn't let em' own me," she declared, swiping at her tears, "I never stopped fighting."

"We never do," Rick reminded, "that's why we make it when others don't."

Beth thanked him softly and turned to Daryl.

"Will you stay with me out here tonight?"

"Ain't nowhere else I woulda been."

Rick said his goodnights, hugging Beth long and hard, telling her how much she was going to love Alexandria before he finally started back down the road towards the gates.

"What a day huh?" she teased with puffy eyes, looking up at Daryl.

"Hope I ain't dreamin'," he told her as they started towards the RV.

Daryl followed her inside, locking the door behind them. Beth flicked on the light above the small sink and the bulb hummed to life. A pile of clothes was folded neatly on the kitchenette table.

"Aaron left some for you too," she told him over her shoulder, separating the larger pair of sleep pants from those he'd left for her.

"Don't need em," he shrugged, "gonna keep watch. You just sleep."

Beth turned to face him, leaning against the table and watching him double check the windows. Daryl rechecked the latch on the door and was hit in the face with a t-shirt when he turned around.

"You have guts all over you," she pointed to the button down he wore with the sleeves cut off. Daryl stared down at the spatter of racoon blood and grimaced. Everything had happened so fast, the rest of the day before he'd wandered into the church out of curiosity seemed like a different lifetime.

"Back to bossin' me around again I see," he grumbled, knowing very well she knew exactly how thrilled it made him. Beth smiled sweetly, that wide toothy grin he'd missed so bad. And then Daryl awkwardly looked around the interior of the trailer, looking for somewhere private to change his shirt.

"Be right back," he mumbled turning towards the closet sized bathroom, unbuttoning his shirt. He only closed the door half way, was pulling it, half unbuttoned, over his head when Beth appeared at the door way and pushed the door open.

"Girl, what are you doing?" he groused, turning quickly to face his back away from her and fumbling with the clean t-shirt.

"Daryl," her hand reached out and stopped his, she took the t-shirt from him and placed it on the sink counter. "You don't have to be ashamed either. Don't have to hide it."

He shook his head,

"It's not…"

"It is," Beth insisted, unwavering but gently, "it's the same. And I can't believe that you don't think I should be ashamed if you don't believe it about yourself. I didn't deserve it, you didn't deserve that."

Something in her eyes, in the way she was staring up at him so sincerely made him brush past her gently. He leaned over the sink in the kitchenette beneath the lightbulb, turned to look at her standing in the doorway. His back was on full display for the first time in as long as he could remember. He turned back to stare out of the small shoebox sized window over the sink.

"You wanna see it, there it is."

"We both have scars now," she reminded and his head fell. Everything she had confided in the church was sitting in his stomach like vomit. Someone had taken things from her that nobody had a right to.

He felt her step into the space behind him with two creaks on the floor of the RV and the warmth of her breath on the back of his bare arm.

"Daryl," she whispered. He watched a walker, somewhere in the distance down the road, walk in circles, unable to thoroughly trace the hint of human scent in the air. The night was dark, the last touches of sunlight still bathing the road enough to see half a mile or so down. "Daryl," her voice was louder this time and two arms snaked around his waist. Her skin was warm on his bare stomach, sent goosebumps dancing across his shoulders.

Hugs were something new for him, after the world ended. In the beginning, it had made him uncomfortable, tense and nervous when Rick would pull him into a brotherly embrace or Carol would envelope him in her nurturing arms after a run or a close call. His father's touch only ever brought pain. Whatever love his mother had once had in her had been eaten up and spit back out by the old man, and then burned up with her in that mattress. Merle's hugs had always been too rough, shaking shoulders and hard slaps on the back, _man up little brother._

With time, the affection from his new family had become welcome and comfortable and even reciprocated. Sometimes there just weren't words when you lived in their world, saw the things they did. The hugs, shoulder clasps and elbow bumps could speak volumes. _We're still here._

The kind of closeness he'd shared with Beth was different though. They'd never been intimate in a sexual sense, although as the days in the woods had gone on, the tension when they lay together in the brush had built. Still, she was the only woman he'd ever held, before or after the world ended. He'd had a handful of fumbling encounters with women back in the before, all of which had left him feeling awkward and embarrassed. None of those had been arms wrapped around one another, hands clasped together, piggy back rides and little snores against his side. Beth was the only woman he'd ever felt pressed in the small of his back, her face between his shoulder blades, their breathing synchronizing.

"I looked for you in everything, looked for those damn white crosses everywhere," he forced out over the lump in his throat, looked down at her hands where they overlapped each other, holding onto him. Her hands made for the piano were all brittle broken nails and faded scars. Those hands had defended herself against a man forcing himself inside her, against the undead stalking her as she hobbled alone on the road, all to get back to him.

"Never shoulda' left. Shoulda stayed, kept lookin'," his throat hurt, "Ran for two days, then there was a group, led me to Rick. They were gonna' kill him, gonna hurt Carl real bad. Then we found the others, found Judy. I'd already lost you and I couldn't…wasn't strong enough to let them go on without me and be alone again," the admission tasted bitter on his tongue.

"You don't have to justify anything," she promised, her chin resting on the back of his bicep, "I was gone, they made me gone Daryl, made it so nobody could ever find any of us, you have to believe that. You did what you had to do."

The lightbulb above the sink flickered and bathed them in a dancing yellow glow. They stood, for a long time listening to one another's breathing. Beth pressed the jagged skin of her scarred cheek to his bare back, so it lay over the map of raised skin where his father's leather strap had dug inches deep.

"Once," she began quietly, her words dancing up over his shoulder, "right after we took daddy's leg in the prison and he was trying to walk again, he told me that he still felt it sometimes. Still expected it to support his weight."

Daryl nodded so she knew he was listening and slid one hand down the length of her arm to cover both of hers where they rested on his stomach. The light finally flickered for the last time and burnt out, left them standing like that, two shadows in the night.

"That's how I felt you Daryl Dixon," she whispered into the dark very matter-of-factly, "when I was gone and alone and bad things were happening. Felt you like a phantom limb, still holdin' me up even when you weren't there. With me all the time."

"Me too," he croaked out. In that cell he'd thought of everyone but it had been her face he saw when he closed his eyes, her big blue eyes with the flames of a burning shack reflecting in them. _You gotta stay who you are_ she had whispered in his ear when he stood in front of Negan, offered a reprieve from the torture if he would just give it all up, give up everything that made him who he was.

Daryl slowly untangled her arms from his waist so he could turn his body, placed either hand on the sides of her face and ran a thumb over the scar on her chin. She was the only woman he'd ever looked in the eye like this, everything in his body wanting to kiss her. Just so maybe she could know, exactly the way he needed her.

"When I was there," he began, "They kept playin' this song, over and over. Tryin' to break me."

"What was it?" she prodded gently, leaning into one of his hands.

"Don't matter," he shrugged, "after a while all I heard was you, singin' by the campfire. Kept me steady, helped me stay me."

"Guess we both have scars and we both have a _there_ ," Beth mused and her voice cracked a little, "will it always be like this, always comparing them, _there_ and here?"

"Naw," he promised, "we're gonna figure out how to put them away."

"What if we can't?" she asked.

"We gotta," he reminded, "we gotta or it'll kill us."

In the end they decided neither would keep watch, because neither of them of could really sleep. They lay on the pull out bed in the RV, each on their side, just watching one another until the sun came up.


	6. Chapter 6

AN: I promise, more than loving stares are coming soon, haha. You guys have been awesome with the reviews and I'm so grateful people are loving this! After this and the next couple chapters we've got to get to some fun action stuff, you don't think the people at Grady are gonna get away with what they've done, do you?

* * *

 **Beth**

" _No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don't."_

Glenn had once told her a story, just bits and pieces, about how for his mother's fortieth birthday his family had paid for her to return to Korea for a week's vacation. She hadn't been back since she was seventeen and it was her dream to return to the town where she'd grown up. Glenn had laughed, shook his head in disbelief when he relayed how his mother had come back to Michigan completely unimpressed. " _She said that wasn't home anymore and she didn't know why she'd spent so long missing it."_ He'd mumbled something about how it would have been nice if she figured that out before they spent all the money. Beth of course had known he was sharing the anecdote for her sake, because they were shivering beside a fire at their fourth campsite in two weeks and she'd just watched her childhood home become consumed with the undead and abandoned. Her daddy had wrapped an arm around her, _"Glenn's right Bethy, a house or a place doesn't make a home, people make a home."_

Now, she sat on the edge of the bed Glenn and Maggie had shared in Alexandria and wondered if there was a name for a home without the people. What was left of a space when the people who made it theirs were gone? It couldn't just be a room, there had to be something more. She could feel it, could still feel the love inside the cozy little bedroom.

Beth didn't know if she had a place yet, but she had people. She had Rick and his family, she would have Maggie again soon, she had Daryl. Had him and knew him well enough to know he was just outside the door, for which she was grateful. Beth didn't want him out of arms reach just as much as he wouldn't let her out of eye shot. It was very easy for people to disappear, they'd all learned that lesson too many times to count.

Despite how relieved she was to be back with the people she loved and as many times as she'd reminded herself of reality, the term 'coming home' to her had always included a visual of the prison gates opening. Finding her daddy smiling, leaning against his cane and Glenn laughing behind Maggie on their way up the guard tower. During the trip from Georgia to Virginia Aaron had asked her flat out if she wanted him to be fully honest with her. She'd said yes of course, there was no room for pacification or kid gloves in their world. He'd relayed the whole story, of her family being forced to kneel in the dirt. Maggie, sick and shivering and watching powerlessly as her husband was murdered. Just as they'd been forced to watch their father die, helpless. Coming home to a family without Glenn, and without Maggie for the time being, didn't feel whole. Like she was dressing in the uniform of a past life. It was still hers, it was still warm, but it didn't fit quite the same anymore.

They'd entered the gates as soon as the sun came up, breaking one another's gaze for the first time in hours. The towering doors had rolled open, a dark-haired girl in the guard stand that Beth didn't recognize following Daryl's order to reveal what had once been an upper-class sanctuary.

"Welcome to suburbia," Daryl had grumbled, taking her on a walking tour of what they now called home. He pointed out who lived in what home, or who had lived in which house before they died. He showed here where to find things like the infirmary and pantry and what he called the bullet room; the hand painted sign on the door referred to it as the 'Ammunition Workshop'. Some of the houses were burnt out. Most wore some battle scars like broken windows and boarded over sections of blown out wall. Someone who lived in one of the homes had spray painted 'Excuse our mess, went to war' over a board that covered what had once been French windows. The girl who emerged from that home with an AK47 slung casually over her shoulder introduced herself as Tara. She'd teased easily with Daryl as she approached, ' _wait are you bringing a girl home?'_ Daryl had blushed, blew annoyed hot air out of his nostrils. He introduced her as Maggie's sister and the girl's eyes had widened.

"I feel like your Chupacabra," Beth had sighed after they continued on their way, "she looked at me like something she didn't actually think existed."

"Tara's good people, you'll like her," he assured and then shrugged, "Chupacabra was always real to me."

It was still early; the streets were quiet and most of the homes dark. Daryl had stopped at the stairs to one house and gestured to it and the one beside it.

"Rick and Michonne and the kids are in there, me and Maggie and Glenn and Sasha were in that one."

"You don't stay there anymore?" Beth inquired and he shrugged.

"Usually just use Rick's spare ta' shower . Didn't feel right…after I came back."

Aaron's story hadn't left out the part where Daryl had been the one to get off his knees, the one to fight back. _"No one blames him,"_ Aaron had insisted, "e _xcept himself."_

As far as somewhere to sleep, she knew he wasn't doing much of that anyway.

They'd gone in though, together, under the guise of finding some of Maggie's clothes for Beth. Daryl had hung back as she inspected the space, trying to imagine the world where her sister and Glenn had gotten to live happily, like a real married couple, even if it had only been for a snippet of time. She pictured them in the kitchen, Glenn leaning in to taste test her Mamma's famous chicken noodle soup that Beth knew Maggie would've cooked up the second she got her hands on an equipped kitchen.

Daryl led her to their bedroom, where Beth now found herself. There was a book with a piece of paper folded inside on the windowsill. One of Glenn's hats hanging off the bed frame. On the mirror a black and white ultrasound photo was taped. Beth took it down gently, traced the outline of the little pea sized baby. She needed to go see her sister, but she needed to make sure she was ok first. Beth wouldn't allow herself to be one more worry on Maggie's watch. She tucked the photo in her pocket.

By the time they exited the home, people would be waking up. She packed a small bag of what was left of Maggie's and took a deep breath, tried to soak up some of the love still hanging in the air. She found Daryl down the hall, rummaging through another bedroom. It was a sparse space with a twin mattress on the floor and a rucksack that had been dumped and rooted through, she assumed when the Saviors had come to take their 'tribute' as Aaron had called it. She knew the bag had still been packed the last time he'd slept there.

"You never even unpacked," she observed quietly from the doorway. He didn't startle, toed through a few of the spilled belongings with his boot and gave a non-committal grunt.

"In the end, we always have to run," Beth concluded quietly, echoing something she'd heard him say once, at the prison. Daryl raised his head from where he seemed to be looking for something in the mess of his clothes. He took two steps towards her, close enough to feel his body heat.

"Ain't like that anymore," he leaned in close as if what he was saying was a secret that she needed to hear clearly. "You can be safe here, no more runnin'."

There had been a time that he'd avoided her eye contact. She'd brought him supper once, when he was skimmed with a bullet and hung up in one of the bedrooms in their farmhouse. Beth had always overheard him, loud and cocky out on the lawn, usually arguing about something with one of Rick's group. When she'd come in the room with the tray of food he'd nervously chewed his fingernail, mumbled a quiet thank you and stared at the sheet of the bed when she asked if he needed anything else. She could remember finding him handsome and scolding herself for even having the thought with Jimmy sitting downstairs. That winter, when sometimes when they'd throw caution to the wind and she'd sing around the fire, Beth could feel his eyes on her from where he was always lurking by the tree line, watching all their backs. And she'd turn to catch him, hold his gaze for the quickest moment before he'd avert it, looking guilty and nervous and kind of adorably, embarrassed. It had been a bit of a thrill to know someone like Daryl Dixon found her nice enough to look at.

It was in the prison that she began to realize she admired him for much more than his muscles, that something inside her became fully alive when he was present. It was around then also, that she began to understand that he wasn't even close to the type of man who watched a girl just because she was pretty. Beth knew she wasn't imagining it when she caught him side glancing her as they used crowbars to lighten the walker load at the fence, or following her back and forth motions as she rocked Judith up and down the prison catwalk. It didn't make any sense, the two of them, but in so many ways it made perfect sense. And after the night in the cabin, when so much had shifted between them, Daryl started to hold her eye contact anytime he could. Whatever barrier of caution that once stood between them had been burned with the shack. They were barreling towards one another with little touches and tender words and a feeling that covered her like a blanket that Beth had never felt before; much, much more than little butterflies with her previous boyfriends.

" _We_ can be safe here," she corrected, reaching out to take his hand. He stared down at her, eyes tearing into her soul the same way they had on their last night in the funeral home. When he'd looked at her from across the table and confirmed she wasn't the only one feeling what she thought she was feeling. _"You know."_

Then they'd had to run. Then she was alone, handcuffed and alone with a man who looked at women not just as pretty faces, but as rewards to himself. Beth felt her skin crawl and pulled her hand back. She didn't want him to feel it on her.

"Beth, what?" Daryl reached for her again and Beth took a step back.

"Nothing," she promised but she knew her eyes betrayed her, "we should go out. The other's will be getting up. Bout time I showed myself."

Daryl didn't push it, nodded and grabbed his rucksack from the bedroom floor and threw a few of his shirts inside. They locked the door behind them and left it as It was for now, frozen in time.

Michonne and Carl were in their front yard, tossing a rubber ball back and forth, Carl with one hand behind his back. He saw her first, dropping the ball and shaking his head as if he was seeing a ghost before running towards her, sending them both tumbling down into the lawn. She laughed, the happiest laugh she could remember laughing since at least the prison. He was taller than her now, long and lanky and his voice low in timber, cracking occasionally. Beth noticed that before she noticed the bandage over his eye that he kept mostly covered by a swoop of long hair.

"Who needs two eyes anyway?" he'd feigned with a shrug. He wasn't the little boy who'd blush when she ruffled his hair anymore, more like a weary soldier with confidence in his shoulders but exhaustion in his face. He hugged her hard and Beth felt angry because walkers didn't take eyes. The walkers were just like everyday hazards now, same way people had always said 'well you could get by a car' when talking about the risk of simple living, before the world ended. It was people who were the real problem.

Michonne was smiling wildly and Beth knew Rick hadn't been able to keep his secret from everyone, not that she minded.

"We're so happy you're home," Michonne told her, holding her close, adding very seriously, "anything you need, anything, I'm here."

One by one people seemed to gather on Rick's front lawn, those who didn't know Beth intrigued by a new comer's presence and even more intrigued as they learned she was Maggie's long assumed dead sister.

Sasha had done a double take, nearly dropped the backpack she was slinging over her shoulder as she broke through the small crowd to see what all the fuss was about.

"It's a long story," Beth told her as they hugged and then, "I'm sorry about Tyrese. He was a good man. I wish I could have been here to fight with all of you."

"I'm sorry about your dad," Sasha countered, "and Glenn. They were both good men, good friends."

"The best," Beth agreed, forcing a weak smile to slow the flow of the tears threatening to fall. Sasha put a hand on her shoulder.

"We've lost a lot of good people," Sasha pointed in the direction of one of the towering walls, where names were neatly painted, a memorial. Her old friend smiled, "it's good to get one back for once."

" _Why do you keep trying to leave Beth? Your friends are all dead. Your family is dead. They're probably all turned, they'd rip you to shreds if you did find them. You don't have anyone left, but us. You need to start to appreciate that."_

Dawn had told her daily that her family was dead. Sometimes she invented scenarios of how Beth would find their bodies if she ever did escape.

"You don't know how happy I am to be here with all of you," she promised, "You don't know how badly I wish I was here for everything that happened. I went through a hell of my own, would have rather gone through one with my family."

"I think this reunion is missing someone," Rick's voice cut through the conversation. Beth had to bring both hands to her mouth to muffle the sob that escaped her lips. Rick stood on his porch, Judith stood at his side, one chubby arm wrapped around her father's leg. She was so big, staring at Beth with giant brown eyes. Her hair was long, starting to curl around the base of her neck.

"She's not gonna remember me," Beth heard herself cry, a hand on her heart where it ached to think of the little girl seeing her as a stranger.

Rick scooped up his daughter and descended the stairs, Judith buried her face in his neck shyly. Rick smiled softly at Beth.

"Even if she doesn't remember your face," he started, "you were the first person to nurture her, long before I was strong enough to do it. A part of her will always remember that."

Beth wasn't Judith's mother though, she had never gotten lost in any denial there. Still, she'd devoted herself to the newborn from the very moment she'd held her in her arms. She'd spent her nights waking up on the hour with the fussy infant. She cleaned up vomit, changed diapers and had even sewn cloth ones for when the runs fell short on pampers. The moments that Judith first broke a tooth, army crawled across the rug on her cell floor and held the bottle on her own were permanently engrained in Beth's memory. Judith had brought her back to life, warming the heart inside the numb shell she'd been walking around in that winter. Beth remembered the way Daryl had held the newborn so tenderly, stared down at her cooing unlike she'd ever seen him. Judith had brought them all back to life, given them something to believe in.

During the days following the prison's fall, when all they did was run and fight and hide, she spent a lot time being angry with God. About her dad, about Maggie, about everything. Mostly though, she'd cursed him over Judith. Beth had come to a certain understanding with the man upstairs, it was hard when her friends died but she could force herself to reason that they were all leftovers anyway, should have died in the early days of the outbreak like everyone else, were already living on borrowed time. Judith however, had come after. Why would God allow her be born, through an almost miracle of tragic proportions, into the corpse rotten air of their world if he was just going to let her die?

She was alive though, alive and peaking at Beth from Rick's shoulder.

"Hi Judy," she squeaked out, "I'm so happy to see you. I missed you very, very much."

And then the toddler was offering her a tiny wave, just curling her fingers in and out but a wave none the less.

"Do you wanna give Beth a hug Judy?" Rick whispered against his daughter's hair.

"Oh, no she doesn't have to," Beth assured, wiping her tears, "she has to get used to me again."

Except Judith slowly untangled herself from her cocoon in Rick's armpit and reached two arms out in Beth's direction.

"Up up," she gurgled at her. Beth hesitated, trying to steady herself before she put her hands beneath the baby's arms and took her from Rick. Judith wrapped two arms around her neck and rested her head on one shoulder.

Beth stroked her hair and looked up at Daryl. His lips twitched into a smile.

"Can't break that bond," he observed, giving her a reassuring nod.

Beth felt relief flowing through her veins as if it was coming straight from an IV, because this still fit perfectly.


	7. Chapter 7

AN: Sorry this one seemed to take forever to get out! I hope you like it and hopefully it flows well.

 **Maggie**

 _"Healing comes in waves and maybe today the wave hits the rocks And that's ok, that's ok darling."_

* * *

It was exactly as she remembered. The sky was clear, hot Georgia sun warming her shoulders and the gush of the rushing watering echoing in her ears. Amicalola Falls, the tallest waterfall in the state.

"My daddy brought me here when I was seven."

The bumper sticker was on his truck until the day they fled their farm. Glenn smiled, his face half hidden under the brim of his baseball cap. His skin was so clear, his eyes so bright, everything fully intact. No more blood.

"I know, you told me. I always wanted to bring you here after that."

And then, it was the damndest thing, Glenn was flying, floating out over the edge of the cliff with the biggest grin.

"Babe!" he called out, doing a summersault in the air and dipping his toes in the whitecaps of the waterfall, "you were right, this does feel like flying!"

She brought one hand up to shield her eyes from the glare and shook her head, laughing.

"I didn't mean it literally!" she shouted out to him.

"Sorry," he laughed, suddenly back at her side. Maggie leaned back on her elbows in the grass.

"You know when we came here Beth was only a little baby, bet she doesn't even remember it. Annette stayed all the way back," she nodded somewhere over her shoulder, "daddy held me and Shawn's hands and I swear we almost toed the edge. But Annette was too scared to bring Beth close, like she might fall over the edge."

Glenn reached out, lay his palm on her swollen belly.

"She's not gonna fall over the edge Maggie."

She squinted up at him, pursing her lips together.

"You sure?"

He smiled down at her, God that big stupid smile that she'd hated to love when she first met him.

"I'm sure."

They both lay back in the grass, orange and red flashes from the sun swirling around in the darkness of their closed eyes. Glenn rolled over on his side to face her.

"You should bring her, someday," he nodded at her belly, "and him. It'll be safer one day. Will you do that? Bring our son here, make sure he knows how it feels to fly?"

"I will," she promised.

"I love you Maggie."

"I love you Glenn."

She woke with his name on her lips, her body startling awake. She was on the sofa in the sitting room of the main house. There was a small fire, mostly glowing timber and ash, still going in the fireplace. Her back rested against one arm of the sofa, across from her Beth's rested against the other. Their feet were nestled together in the middle under a blanket. Her sister blinked at her.

"You ok?"

Maggie waited a pause, just to make sure she wasn't still in her dream. One of the children had come running through the foyer earlier that week, squealing about how someone was at the gate to see her. She'd pinched herself several times when she lay eyes on the person walking up the path towards the house, certain it was another one of the dreams she had nightly.

"Yea," she assured, brushing some hair from her forehead and smiled, "those are the good dreams."

Beth offered a small grin in return, turned to watch the fire dying in the hearth. There was a scar that ran almost the entire length of her sister's cheek, among others. Maggie hadn't had the guts to ask where each one had specifically come from. She wasn't sure if it was because her sister had been born early, small and fragile or simply because she was the youngest but Beth had always been their baby. Never weak, always a little bull headed, but delicate. The one and only season she'd played softball Beth had managed to sprain a wrist and an ankle. Weak bones, her step-mamma used to say as she poured Beth extra glasses of milk. It never did seem to make her any less brittle. Shawn and Maggie used to tumble about the farm, a tomboy and her brother playing on a backyard battlefield, while Beth sat inside getting lost in her piano and her journals full of songs. They'd all changed with the infection, Maggie had seen her little sister evolve into a survivor. Now though, now she was like a new person, stitched together with something stronger in the places she'd been ready to tear once upon a time. Maggie had watched through her binoculars from the guard tower as she hunted with Daryl that afternoon; tracking rabbits through the brush, putting down walkers with the ease of opening her piano lid. This woman with the scars and the perfect aim and the muscles in her lean arms was so far from their little Bethy.

"Are you ok?" she finally inquired, repeating the question back at her sister.

Since she'd arrived five days ago Beth had offered details of her captivity in Atlanta in small doses. Each time she held her head high, spoke matter of factly and assured Maggie that she was ok, that she was 'working through it'. The things she told her though, left aches in Maggie's heart. Her daddy would be devastated at the things the world had done to their little baby.

Beth nodded at her, smiling a tight smile.

"Tell the truth," Maggie prodded, gentle but still trying to pull her older sister authority card. This time Beth shrugged.

"I'm home, I'm safe. So I'd say yes," she looked into the fire and then back to Maggie, "it's hard, readjusting. There are things that are hard. But I'm happy."

"You can tell me," Maggie offered, "I'm your sister, you can tell me anything. I remember, what it was like when we finally got to Alexandra, it was hard for all of us. Harder not being out there than it was being out there sometimes."

Beth looked down at her own hands, sighed and spoke hesitantly.

"I still hear the things they used to say to me, about being a burden, about being weak. Part of me, most of me, knows that nobody feels that way about me being back. It's like they planted this little seed in my brain though, and it's hard to stop it from growin'."

Maggie searched for the right thing to say but Beth continued before she could.

"And it's hard…it's been hard to let people get close, like touch wise ya know?"

"Daryl?" Maggie questioned softly. Until now she hadn't asked any questions, had turned a blind eye to the fact they hardly ever left one another's side or disappeared behind the same bedroom door every night. When they had all found one another, after Terminus, he'd explained to her what had happened. He'd told her how he'd been with Beth on the road, how he'd lost her. He'd spoken like a man who'd lost everything.

"He's a good man, the best," Beth declared quietly and Maggie realized she was defending whatever their relationship was to her.

"I know that," she promised her sister, "I see the way he looks at you and you at him. It's a rare thing to find in our world, you gotta hang on to that."

"He thinks you blame him. In an irrational way, the same way I still hear the things the people at Grady said to me. Negan planted that seed in him and it keeps growing."

Maggie sighed.

"I know, I can tell in the way he looks at me. I don't, I never could. Glenn never would either. The only person to blame was the person who did it," she watched relief wash over Beth's face, "and you're not weak Beth, you never have been. What you did, what you went through and made it back to us, you couldn't be weak if you tried. Having you back has been the most healing thing for me."

Beth smiled, small and hopeful.

"They told me I'd never see my family again, there's no way anyone had survived, to stop trying," she recalled, "I told them they had no idea who my family were."

Maggie reached across the seat between them to take her sister's hand.

"Don't push Daryl away, don't let him push you away. You can help each other be whole again."

Beth nodded.

"We're gonna work it out, together. We make a good team."

"I've noticed," Maggie nudged her under the blanket. "You'll come back soon right? Before the baby? I'd like it if you were here when he came."

"Oh I'm gonna be here all the time," Beth scoffed, laughing, "crazy auntie Beth from Alexandria with gifts and hugs and all that good stuff."

They said their good nights, Maggie off to her bedroom in the main house and Beth off through the front doors to find Daryl. Maggie made quick work of slipping into her night clothes, sweatpants and a tshirt of Glenn's that Beth had presented to her when she'd arrived along with a few other odds and ends from their home in Alexandria. The shirt was too small around the belly but she didn't care. It wasn't until she moved to her dresser to lather on some of the homemade lotion one of the women in the community made that she heard the voices drifting into her open window.

She knew it was wrong to eavesdrop, she really did. Except Maggie spoke to God every night, partly out of habit and partly because faith was a hell of a thing to shake. Each time, she included a prayer for the too long list of people she'd loved and then lost to the post-infection world. Until five days ago, her sister had been one of those names on the list. It was hard to stop looking at her.

On the rear left side of the main house, right outside her bedroom window, was a circle of heavy stone benches, usually utilized for the older children's outdoor class time. Maggie's room was dark so neither noticed her as Beth found him there and took a seat beside him. Maggie stood back in the blackness of her room, by the window and watched their silhouettes.

They sat shoulder to shoulder on one of the benches, boot toes touching. The red flicker of Daryl's cigarette was held in the hand furthest from Beth, out and away from her to keep the smoke from blowing in her face.

An oil lamp flickered to life on the windowsill of the room next to hers, bathing them both in a dim glow. They squinted up into it, went back to their business after realizing it was just someone entering a room. Maggie watched Beth's doe eyes watch Daryl carefully stub out his cigarette and deposit it back into a cardboard pack to be saved for later. He looked so different than the last time she'd seen him, with his hair short and his face shaved. There was something much more vulnerable about him, exposed like that.

They were talking low and easy about their trip back in the morning, plans for the road. They fell into a silence and Maggie was content just to watch her sister breathe, blinking up at the stars that danced so brightly over the hilltop.

It was Daryl who broke the hush, kind of hesitant and mumbling. He was fiddling with the fringes of a hole in his jeans, unsure what to do with his hands with the cigarette gone.

"When we get back, you don't gotta stay in Rick's basement with me."

Beth turned to face him sharply.

"You don't want me to?"

"Not what I said," Daryl interrupted, he sounded irritated but not with her, more like with himself for fumbling with whatever it was he really wanted to say, "I meant, don't feel obligated, if that's why you are."

Beth was observing him, pressing her lips together, trying to understand.

"It's cause of how I been ain't it?" she questioned, disappointed.

Daryl shrugged, still watching the tops of his boots.

"You ain't been any way, and I don't want you going anywhere...I want you there. Just don't want you thinkin' you're stuck with me or nothin'."

"You think I went through what I went through, getting' home" Beth's voice had gone hoarse, "just to get stuck?"

"Shit I'm no good at this," Daryl stood up, hands clasped together behind his head and stared at the sky.

"If it's because I've been pullin' away when we've been gettin' closer, in a physical way," Beth spoke to his side, "I do want that, I want it so bad. It's just gonna take me time."

Daryl turned to fully face her, eyebrows together in an angry peak but once again, the anger wasn't at her. It was at himself, for even making her question something like that. And it was at a dead man; the same one Maggie would've also liked to put a bullet in if Beth hadn't already done it herself.

"I'm not talking about nothin' like that. You don't gotta give me anything more than what ya already do. Hell we could go on like this forever and I'd die happy."

If you'd asked Maggie two years ago how she felt about Daryl Dixon and her baby sister sharing more than just friendship, she probably would've had more than a lot to say. This man though, there wasn't anything more she could ever ask for in someone to love Beth. Her daddy would've felt the same, she knew that.

Silence fell over them again, Daryl chewing at his thumbnail and Beth's eyes following his every moment.

"You know, I had a lot of time to think," she started softly, toeing lines in the dirt with one foot. Maggie could make out Daryl raise an eyebrow, waiting for her to continue "when I was there I mean."

There. Maggie refused to call it a hospital, because hospitals were where people went for care and safety. The place Beth had described had been a prison camp. As far as Maggie was concerned, the monsters there should have headed her sister's warnings. They had no idea where Beth came from, no idea who now had them listed as marked men.

Daryl made a noise in the back of his throat. Maggie could remember a time when he'd been a man of more words. Though he'd been more careless then, with the things that came tumbling out of his mouth. Now he seemed so intentional with everything he said, as if he were only given a daily ration and he didn't want to use them up on nothing.

"I thought about a lot of stuff but mostly, when I really wanted to just escape into my own head, I thought about our house."

"The funeral home," Daryl concluded after a long moment of confused silence and she could see Beth nod. He'd been pacing back and forth, kicking up dirt with his boots but he finally took his place again, sitting at her side.

"Yea, about what it woulda been like, if we'd been able to stay."

"Pipe dream anyway," Daryl dismissed with a shrug, "walkers woulda ran us out eventually, or worse, people."

Beth squinted at the side of his head, searching for something.

"It was a nice place, we woulda made it work, just like you said."

There was something almost accusing in her tone, daring him not to back down from what he'd once also imagined.

"I wanted it too," he promised, softer this time, "we woulda made it good."

"We'd have cleaned it up real nice," Beth agreed, her voice wistful, "We'd have put fences outside, walker trappers like we had at the prison, alarms at the tree line."

"Coffins woulda ruined the décor," Daryl interrupted dryly and Beth swatted at his arm.

"We woulda used those for firewood and makin' the fence."

"I don't know, that one was comfy, mighta kept it for a bed."

Daryl Dixon was joking, something light and relaxed in his voice and Maggie couldn't remember a time since the prison she'd heard him talk like that. He and Glenn had joked often, shared a bond formed around busting one another's chops that Maggie didn't need to understand to appreciate. Underneath the jabs had been nothing but respect, loyalty and genuine love. After Terminus, Glenn had worried that he might go off on his own, or even worse, end up in over his head when he was always wondering off. ' _I can't put down another friend Maggie, not him.'_

"Not room for both of us in there," Beth teased back in a sing song. Maggie blushed, she imagined Daryl did too by the way he ducked his head.

She decided to stop listening, give them their privacy, but then Beth spoke again and the gentleness in her voice kept Maggie glued to the spot by the window.

"That mangy one eyed dog woulda came back you know? And we woulda raised him as our own."

She sounded nostalgic, a little bit sad.

"Damn dog caused a lot of problems," Daryl grumbled and the lightness was gone from his voice, replaced with regret and guilt. Maggie was used to that tone, it was in his words every time he'd spoken to her since the night they'd knelt in the dirt and looked down Negan's bat.

"Wasn't the dogs fault," her little sister slipped her arm through Daryl's, interlocking their hands and holding them together on his kneecap, "wasn't yours either."

They weren't talking about a fantasy anymore, no this was about the real world that had dropped them both in different hells. He finally turned to face her and their noses were almost touching.

"Besides," Beth told him pointedly, "that dog woulda became your best friend and hunting partner."

Daryl laughed, a God's honest laugh from the lips of Daryl Dixon, and his forehead touched Beth's before he looked up to the sky.

"Not a chance girl."

"Yes sir Mr. Dixon, you two woulda brought me home mud snakes and racoons every day to cook up like some backwoods house wife."

"You woulda loved it," Daryl teased.

Beth's smile betrayed any argument she might have had against his statement. Daryl looked down at her.

"So no," Beth told him very surely, "I don't wanna stay anywhere else. I woulda stayed with you with you in that house forever and nothin's changed."

"You sure?" Daryl pressed, sounding so exposed and she felt guilty for watching.

"I'm sure," Beth whispered back, "we don't have to put this away Daryl, not this. We earned this one."

Maggie rested her hand on her belly, stroked her thumb over where she imagined her baby's head lay inside her. She watched Daryl Dixon tuck a strand of hair behind her sister's ear and gently touch his lips to hers. It was quick and a little bit nervous and Maggie realized that despite the way they seemed to move together as a well-oiled machine, she was witnessing their first chaste kiss. Beth smiled, a wide kind of smile with all of her teeth showing and Daryl blushed, flush and alive looking.

Maggie smiled too, this time with a thank you to add to her prayers. She laid on her side of the bed, still the left just as she had in whatever makeshift home her and Glenn had made for the night. She kissed her fingertips, pressed them to her stomach.

"We're all going to be ok," she promised to her baby boy.


	8. Chapter 8

AN: Like I said before, I've taken a few liberties with Grady, making it a larger and much more ill-intentioned operation. Also, I binge watched season 2 and 3 today and I think early Daryl really came out in this chapter because of that. Hopefully in a good way haha. Basically, Beth is stubborn, angry Daryl is angry and we get set up for some action chapters.

* * *

 **Daryl**

 _"His largest fear carried his greatest growth."_

Something about the way the buck's head lay at an awkward angle in the bed of the truck, like it was watching him, reminded him of Merle. Some memory that felt more like another person's life played in his mind; Merle putting sunglasses on a dead deer the first-time Daryl ever got the kill shot himself, moving its jaw to make it talk _"congratulations you little pussy, finally learned to shoot that gun like a man."_ Daryl had been young, maybe ten at the oldest and surrounded by Merle's much older, adult, drunk friends that his brother had a ball embarrassing him in front of. They'd gone back to a hunting cabin after that, Merle had made him look at a porno magazine and they'd all laughed when he uncomfortably looked away from the pages. When the outbreak first happened, it had felt like a bad, weird dream. Like maybe Merle had given him a bad batch of shrooms to escape in when he was too awkward to enjoy the parties his brother drug him too. Now, that life felt like the bad trip whenever it came floating back into his memory. Daryl was certain he was the only person who cherished his post infection life more than the one he'd lived before. He'd certainly already lived longer than he would have, following Merle's lead.

That hadn't been love, not how family was supposed to operate. He understood that now. Now he had people to count on, people to call his own. He was going to make something of a little family with a girl who he never would have had the guts to look at in that other life.

"You know you're late to the meeting," a voice called down to him and he blinked up into the sun. Tara from leaning over the top wall from the guard perch, looking down at him, "Aaron's gonna write you a detention."

Daryl shook his head, Tara was probably one of his favorite people inside Alexandria's walls although he liked to wave off her jokes as if they weren't funny.

"Keep an eye on my friend would ya?" he called back up to her, gesturing to the dead deer in the back of the old Ford Ranger he'd been driving lately.

"He's cute," Tara replied dryly taking in the body, "sure thing. Take the minutes in there for me would ya?"

"Yea, yea," he waved her off and started down the road towards the church. There were two vehicles parked down there, from the Hilltop and Kingdom respectively. There was already talking happening inside when slipped in, trying to make as little noise as he could, holding the door so it shut gently behind him. Rosita was at the front of the church, reading off names and hours for the new watch shifts.

Beth was in the front row and from his place lingering by the door Daryl could see her profile twitch with a smile when Rosita read her name off for three shifts that week. She'd practically been begging since the first week she'd arrived but Rick had insisted that she should rest until her injuries were properly rehabilitated. It had been two months now, two months since she'd come back into his life like a beacon and brought everything back to life. Two months and her wrist and ankle were finally starting to heal properly with the right medical attention and nobody purposefully irritating them because she had spoken out of line or broken a rule. Two months and they were finally starting to sleep more than three hours at a time. She hunted with him, as much as her ankle had allowed and she busied herself with getting reacquainted with Judith but Daryl knew she was bored with her lack of real responsibility.

He took in the rest of the room. Beth and Maggie sat on either side of Enid, listening intently. Rick, Michonne and Aaron were in the front pew on the right side of the church. Sasha and Carl were behind them, Jesus sitting alone in the third. Carol and Phillip sat in the row behind Beth and Daryl tried to slide down the aisle at quietly as he could, tapping Carol's shoulder for his friend to move down. She did so, smiling and patting his shoulder as way of greeting as he settled into the place beside her and behind Beth.

Rosita finished, taking her seat back in the second pew as Aaron stood up to replace her. Daryl reached up to gently tug Beth's braid playfully. She spun around and beamed at him.

"Anything good?" she inquired and Daryl took note, for the thousandth time since she'd been back, how that firecracker feeling in his stomach every time she smiled at him never wore off.

"Big old buck, good one to cut up and freeze for the winter," he winked at her, "no more being cold and hungry for us."

Aaron cleared his throat at the front of the church. Beth spun around like a kid getting caught passing notes in class and focused on the matter at hand. Daryl tried but he found himself entranced by the exposed skin above where her tank top began and the constellation of sun freckles at the base of her neck. He'd woken up with her fully naked body curled against him for the very first time that morning and try as he might, it was nearly impossible to think of anything else. It had been the truth when he'd told that they never needed to be intimate for him to be happy. They could have gone on with clasped hands and noses barely touching until they were old and gray and it still would have been more than he ever would have imagined. More than he ever would have found even in a world not overrun with the dead.

The night before though, beneath him on their comfy bed in their basement they'd made their own, she'd looked up at him with full trust in her eyes. _"I want this, I want it to be about love."_ Daryl felt a heat flush over his body and shook his head. Beside him Carol chuckled and he sat up straight and tried to hone in on what Aaron was saying.

His friend looked weary, probably the most anxious Daryl could remember seeing him without a weapon pointed in his face.

"I think all three of our communities can agree that arsenals and infirmaries were left all but depleted following the last stand with the Saviors," he was saying, "I can testify that here in Alexandria we are dangerously low on medical supplies and more importantly, people."

"We didn't take as big of a hit there," Carol spoke beside him, "not as big as Alexandria's, but we are getting to the bare minimum when it comes to medical. Within a few months' time it's going to get bad." Carol sat at the right hand of Ezekiel in The Kingdom. Daryl missed her companionship, missed her being right next door. She had found a place where she fit though and it was worth it to see that she was finally some semblance of happy.

Daryl knew their medical supplies were as Aaron put it, depleted. Not to mention they had Tara acting as head doctor. She was doing a good job, had helped Beth reduce the pain in her wrist significantly. Still, she only had basic first aid she'd learned in the police academy and second hand knowledge Denise had passed onto her. They'd been able to make it because injuries were way down since the Saviors had been taken out of the equation. With their supplies running low though, more runs were in the future. As always, more runs meant more risk and more injury. They were only one catastrophic event away from multiple preventable deaths.

"We're low too," Maggie agreed, turning to Jesus for confirmation, "we lost a lot of people in the last stand and our arsenal is weak."

"I've been wracking my mind," Aaron sounded exhausted, "and the only viable option I've been able to come up with is starting out of state supply runs. Together we've all but used up most of what the surrounding counties have to offer," he turned towards Beth and gave her a small nod, "and we can confirm that most of Georgia is a no man's land."

Most of the church was quiet, cogs and knobs seeming to turn in everyone's head.

"Gotta say I don't like the idea," Rick spoke up leaning forward in his seat, "with our population as low as it is, I'm not comfortable sending people so far out into uncharted territory."

Daryl had to agree, as he usually did with Rick. Outside of Virginia and Georgia, the world was a mystery. He didn't like the idea of running into other societies at all. They didn't need anyone else trying to come after what they had.

"Could be walking into a trap at any turn," he echoed Rick, meeting his brothers eye, "We got no idea what's out there, what kind of groups. We can't risk leading anyone like the Saviors back to our gates again, not as weak as we are now. Or sending our people out to get picked off."

"And as far as people," Maggie sounded skeptical, "at this point most survivors have already been integrated into some kind of group. Not a lot of folks left on the road."

"You Atlanta people sure are pessimistic," Jesus commented quietly but then put a hand up in defense at most of their stares, "I have to agree though. If we had more people it would be another story."

Aaron leaned against the alter and sighed.

"I'm open to suggestions," he assured, "it's why I asked you all to be here. The numbers are what they are though. As far as Alexandria goes, if we ever want to follow through with the expansion plans we need population and we need medical, not to mention food. We won't have a long enough season to cultivate enough crops to save much, not as late as we are into the growing season. We're going to be looking at a rough winter without it."

Daryl thought of his buck. Even If he caught more, even if they froze enough to last the winter they couldn't solely depend on that. The solar generators were iffy without Eugene's technical knowledge, power losses were happening more frequently and if that happened they could lose a whole winter's protein in hours. He thought of the hundreds of tons of supplies in the Savior's compound that had been lost in the explosions. It had been necessary though, bombing the place with explosives had been one of their last options but it had made a serious impact.

He watched the back of Beth's head and chewed a fingernail. She would never be hungry again, he'd make sure of it. Even if it meant he didn't eat. And he'd promised her safety, that they could be safe together. The notion of that promise ever being broken made him uneasy. Daryl watched her sit up a little straighter in her seat and heard her clear her throat.

"What if there was a place," she began, her voice drifting backwards to him, "a place guaranteed to have what we need?"

Aaron's eyebrows raised in interest as Daryl's came together with his frown.

"You've got our ear," Aaron gestured to the front of the chapel beside him and Beth stood. She turned to face everyone and Daryl crossed his arms over his chest. She didn't meet his eye.

"The place I was before I came here, the place I escaped from…Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, they have everything we're talking about here."

Daryl leaned forward in his seat, bracing one hand on the pew in front of him. It was still warm from where her back had just been pressed against it. He knew she heard the noise of disagreement come from the back of his throat but she ignored him. Maggie's head fell and Rick palmed a hand down his face before he spoke, slow and purposeful.

"Beth, what are you saying exactly?"

"I'm saying they have guns and ammo, lots of it, what was left of the Atlanta PD arsenal and they've raided at least five other county departments and all the military outposts left in the city," she answered confidently, looked each and every person in the face as she spoke, except Daryl. "We're talking about an entire hospital's worth of medical supplies, enough to tide all three of our communities over for at least a few years. They already have three floors cleared and we could do more."

"We can't just march into another community and take what they have," Rosita interrupted, "that makes us no better than the saviors."

"They aren't a community," Beth bit back, "they're an internment camp. The things they do there are unspeakable. We'd be liberating prisoners."

Beth looked at Aaron pointedly.

"You said we need people, the Hilltop, the Kingdom. There are people at Grady, good people who are trapped up there like rats because they have nowhere else to go and they think they owe this woman something. I could write you a list of at least forty of the wards who would be strong assets to any of our communities; nurses, teachers, engineers, veterans."

Daryl felt the tension in his shoulder tighten and spread down his arms. This wasn't supposed to be the bad dream life, not anymore.

"You can't be serious right now," he finally interjected. Beth hesitantly turned to face him, her arms crossed over her chest.

"Daryl, you know it makes sense."

"What I know," he began slowly, "is that you got back here by nothin' less than a miracle and I think we all know I ain't really a guy who goes off spewing about miracles. And now you're talkin' about going back to the place where they almost killed you?" he shook his head and turned to Aaron, "this ain't happenin' so cross it off the list."

"You don't get to make this decision," Beth cried, throwing her hands up in frustration, suddenly looking so much like the girl she'd first been when they'd fled the prison together, screaming at him to feel something. She placed her hand over her heart, "It was me they did those things to so it's me who gets to decide."

She was looking at him with those big eyes, threatening to brim with tears at any second. He wanted to get up, scoop her into his arms and lock the door to their basement behind him. Daryl briefly wondered how long it would take him to get her back to that funeral home, back to the quiet life with just the two of them he'd imagined once.

Beth looked away from him and turned to Rosita and Sasha. She was like a minister in the pulpit, preaching a sermon of justice. He hated every word coming out of her mouth because he knew what it meant, but Daryl felt himself fall even deeper under her spell watching her take charge like a war ready general.

"Do you know what they do there?" she questioned, "When they first take you off the streets, they strap you to the bed for at least three days, breakdown process they call it. They make you need them, starve you, hurt you so you need medical care, whatever it takes. Then you become a ward, and wards exist to please the staff and to make the facility run. That means rape, it means abuse, it means being forced to assist in torturous medical procedures. And when they don't need you anymore, or you cause too big of a fuss, they do away with you."

He could see the fire start to burn behind Rosita and Sasha's eyes and knew he would lose the battle.

Beth turned, this time to her sister.

"There's no children at Grady, because children are useless to them. And God forbid you get pregnant because the doctor will just take care of that and he'll make the wards help him do it. They have what we need. And they kill and they rape and they beat and torture to get it. All under the guise of a cross."

"I get it Beth, we all get it," Maggie promised, "trust me I want nothing more than the people who took you to pay for their actions, but I don't want you going back there."

"Your sister's right," Rick nodded, "I don't think anyone is comfortable with you going back to Atlanta."

"I know the facility," she insisted simply, the stubborn glint in her eye, "I know the schedules and rotations, I know the best ways in and out. I would have to go."

Daryl remembered that morning, remembered the warmth and the security and the way she was like a tailored fit against him. He wasn't ready to give it up, not ready to give up his family.

"You told me yourself," he stood up and out into the aisle, forcing her to look at him, "what they do to run aways, shoot on sight right? You told me they'll have a bounty on your head and you think we should all just be ok with you wantin' to walk up to the door? You expect me to be ok with that?"

"You wanted to fight," Rosita reminded, leaning over Sasha to look at him, "when you escaped Negan, it was the first thing you wanted, rally the troops and get in there. Can't blame her for wanting to do the same."

Daryl respected Rosita, liked her, trusted her. He had to bite his tongue to stop himself from telling her to shut the hell up.

"You're right I wanted to end the Saviors," he confirmed loudly, pointing to his own chest, "because I wanted to make sure that nobody else I loved ended up in that cell, that Carl or Rick or any of you didn't end up there, so that he never got his hands on Maggie!" he could see droplets of spit fly from his mouth with the intensity of his words but he didn't care, "I wanted to end him so that Judith could have a future where she was free," he pointed to Maggie's back, "so that Glenn's son could grow up without the threat of the man who killed his father over his head."

Beth had stepped into his personal space, all of the anger melted from her face as she wrapped her arms around his waist.

"It's different," he insisted weakly, one hand holding her head, "it's awful what they do, but they ain't a threat to us. Not unless we go there. You escaped, can't we just leave it at that?"

It was different because it was her, because he'd just gotten her back. Beth stepped back out of his hold.

"I left people there," she reminded softly, her eyes pleading with him, "I was there for 8 months and I wouldn't have made it without those people. For me to just leave them behind like that, act like the never existed and I don't know what they're going through right now, at this very second…I can't do it Daryl. We can help them, that's what we do. The greater good remember?"

"And what about me huh?" he lifted his chin, "what about going there and riskin' leavin' me behind?"

"We'll go together, all of us, we'll fight together," she insisted, her hands trying to take his but he didn't let her, "we can take them, we have man power and experience over them trust me. You gotta trust me Daryl."

"Ya'll can take your vote," he growled to the rest of the church, shaking his head, "I can see it in your faces that you're going for this."

She tried to wrap her arms around him but he pulled back.

"Damnit Beth," he rubbed both hands down his face and then threw them up in frustration, "we made a damn list. We're supposed to put it away."

Daryl turned and walked out of the church, let the door slam behind him and left Beth watching him go.


	9. Chapter 9

**Rick**

" _For he today, that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother."_

Rick couldn't remember the house ever being occupied, even when they'd first arrived in Alexandria. It was on a little curved street at the back of the development, where the homes were ranchers with bay windows and long front yards. The more modest options inside what had once been a community for the wealthy still wanting to play suburbia. Nobody lived back there now, they'd even parked spare vehicles on some of the lawns. Which is what had led him there in the first place, looking for Daryl after his less than pleasant departure from the meeting. He was the only one who ever came back here regularly other than perimeter check, to fiddle around with the motors in the automobiles.

Everyone else had seemed to gravitate towards the bigger homes near the gates, most of the unattached bunking up frat house style and what was left of families and couples opting for their own space. Rick's children were the last in Alexandria and there was only a handful of homes with people still dwelling inside them. Aaron was right, the only expansion they'd been able to accomplish was that of their cemetery. They had a lot of nerve thinking about building their walls out when they were living in a ghost town.

The house at the end of the street stood out because someone had cut the lawn, whereas most of them were overgrown and weed ridden. He'd given Carl that responsibility at their home and it had felt odd in his throat. Just months ago, his son had stood beside him in battle and taken men's lives, now he was assigning him household chores as if the world had never come to a crashing halt. The incredulity of the situation had been evident on Carl's face, but then he had laughed and accepted the duty without a fight. Rick was grateful that his even his son was content to be living some semblance of normality for once.

A faint sound echoed from inside the house and Rick tilted his head to listen, that was definitely hammering. He walked up the path and tested the knob, it was unlocked. He let himself in and the pounding of a nail into wood became more clear.

The home had all but been stripped clean. There was no furniture, plastic tarp laid out over the hardwood floors. What had once been a wallpapered accent wall in the living room had been scraped down to white plaster. He and Lori had taken on that daunting task once, when they'd moved into their first home. About half way through the job he'd secretly begun to regret fighting her on hiring professionals, not that he ever would have admitted it. She was pregnant with Carl, sat in their hot, not yet air conditioned home with her feet up and laughed as he scraped away all night.

A heavy metal toolbox sat in the center of the room. Daryl was down on his hands and knees, a few nails gripped between his teeth, hammering with excessive force at a baseboard.

He'd heard Rick come in, of course he had, because that's just the way they were. Sometimes Rick was certain he and the other man could communicate telepathically. They'd carried on more conversations through nods, grunts, points and shoulder bumps than they ever had with words. Daryl stopped for just a moment, glared over his shoulder and Rick had to hide his smile because he remembered that look well.

When he'd first arrived in the quarry camp, reunited with his family, he'd felt that glare following his moments most of the time. It had unnerved him, just for a bit. Maybe until they were in Atlanta, until they went storming into that mechanic shop ready to lay down serious fire in exchange for Glenn. Daryl used to call him Chinaman, gruffly insist that Glenn was usually in the way. He'd been willing to risk his life in exchange for the other man's that day though and Rick had realized then that the younger Dixon brother wasn't anything like his older counterpart, not by a long shot. Something about that glare, even though the look itself could bring most men down a few notches, gave Rick a hopeful swell in his chest. At least that was Daryl, he was still there. It was much better than the ghost they'd gotten back in return for their friend from Negan. Of course, ever since Beth had come back bits and pieces of Daryl had been coming back too, day by day.

He opened his mouth to speak and then let it fall shut. Daryl raised an eyebrow at him, as if approving his decision to choose his words carefully.

"It looks nice in here," Rick stated dumbly, shrugging at Daryl as if to acknowledge that he was taking the easy route starting the conversation. The other man's eyebrows came together in an annoyed peak, annoyed because he knew that Rick didn't really care how angry he was. This talk wasn't going to be avoided.

"Been working on it for three weeks," Daryl grumbled, falling back to sit on his heels and pointed to the clean wall, "had to get rid of all that shit, forgot what an ass job scraping wallpaper is."

He stood up, brushed dry wall dust from his knees and gestured to the ground where Rick stood.

"Knocked a wall out there, made it all one big living space."

Rick was genuinely impressed. From what he'd gathered Daryl had worked lots of odd jobs in his time before, landscaper and house painter and mechanic. The kind of jobs that allowed him to drift, pick up work between whatever messes Merle was trying to drag him into.

"Never been much a carpenter myself," he mused, "I always tried but Lori would end up hiring someone to fix whatever mess I made."

"Don't blame her," Daryl snorted, dropping his hammer into the toolbox with a heavy clang, "seen ya try to build a fence before."

Rick chuckled, memories of their early days at the prison playing in his mind. They'd been trying to assemble a fence around the gates, the kind he'd seen at Morgan's hole up. Glenn had gently tried to suggest he take a rest, Daryl had finally grown frustrated and straight up dismissed him from the task, " _Never gonna get it done if we gotta keep fixin' everything you muck up."_

"Yea, you and Glenn saved that job," he agreed, the slump of Daryl's shoulder at the mention of their lost brother's name not lost on him.

"Hell," Daryl mumbled, mostly to himself, wiping his hands on a bandana that had been shoved in his back pocket, "wasn't anything Glenn wasn't good at."

Rick simply nodded in agreement, leaned back on a wall and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

"So, what does Beth think, of all this?"

"She don't know," Daryl muttered, half embarrassed.

Rick beamed. Daryl Dixon who gutted and remodeled a house to surprise a woman reminded him a lot of Daryl Dixon who spent entire days in the woods, searching for a little girl who wasn't even his responsibility.

"You're doing all this, to surprise her?"

"Bout' time we got out of your basement," Daryl shrugged, "Not like we can go buy a plot of land, had to make do with what was up for grabs," he interlocked his hands behind his head and eyed up the joists in a part of the ceiling that was currently exposed, "didn't want it to feel like I was movin' her into a dead person's house though. Figured I'd make it new first, ours."

And then he spun around on his heel and that glare was back.

"So how long do I have?"

"Before what?"

"Before the devil goes down to Georgia," he snarled, laced with sarcasm, "before we take Beth on her death march."

Before. Before he might lose her. Rick sighed, let his head fall back against the wall behind him.

"Daryl…"

"No," his friend interrupted, "I gotta know when so I can show her before she runs off and gets herself killed."

After Daryl had left through the slamming door Beth had stood her ground, although something hurt and worried was evident in her eyes. ' _He'll come around_ ' she'd insisted simply, rebutting anyone else's argument that the mission might be too dangerous for her to be a part of. Rick understood, he knew Daryl understood too. That didn't mean they had to like it. He'd watched her try not to look like she was looking for him when they came back inside the gates, retreating in the house and locking herself in the dark basement.

"She feels like she needs to do this," he reminded Daryl with a sigh, "I don't like it any more than you do. But I never met a Greene woman, actually just a Greene in general, that I could get to stand down from something they believed in."

Daryl grunted, eyebrows almost hitting his hairline, staring down into his fingernails in that old nervous habit.

"You're telling me."

"You love her," Rick observed, not that it was any secret but they'd never discussed it. He'd been able to tell, when Daryl had told him the tale of losing Beth on the road, that he had lost part of himself too. Then she'd been back and he hadn't asked any questions, mostly because it wasn't his business to mind. They were both adults and they were both happy; if that meant they disappeared into his basement at bedtime, then that was just a minor detail. Daryl didn't wander the perimeter nightly anymore, he talked more, he laughed sometimes, he sat on the front porch with Beth and Judith and they took turns narrating picture books to her.

"Didn't mean to," Daryl's shoulders rose and fell, "but then she was asking me to burn down this shack with her and I was done for."

"Trust me I know how that works," Rick assured and then quirked an eyebrow, "actually not the arson part, but the not meanin' to."

"Beat myself up a lot about what her pops would think," Daryl admitted, rifling around in his toolbox.

"Hershel liked you a lot," Rick reminded, "always respected your opinion."

"Likin' a guy and likin' him shackin' up with your daughter are different."

"Hopefully it's a long, long time before I ever have to figure that out," Rick grimaced and then Daryl did too because Judith was almost as much all of theirs as she was Rick's and neither one of them wanted to imagine a world where she wasn't their sweet little baby anymore. "Hershel wanted his girls to find happiness in this world," Rick told him, "so I think if he could see the way you and Beth are together, he'd be more than okay with it."

They stood in silence for a while, Rick watching as Daryl puttered about with hammers and nails. Finally, he stilled and then like a clap of thunder kicked the toolbox across the room, leaving nails and screws scattering in its wake.

"I can't lose her, not again," he shook his head, working through something in his brain, "First time I ever wanted this kind of life."

"We're not gonna lose her," Rick promised and he wasn't sure why, but he felt like he could make those promises now, after everything they'd overcome. "We're gonna do it smart and we're gonna take our time planning this thing. We're gonna free those people, get the things we need," he crossed the room and clasped a hand over the other man's shoulder, "And when we get back, you're gonna live this life. You deserve this life Daryl."

"Nah," Daryl shrugged, "I don't. But Beth deserves it. Dunno if I even deserve to be the guy to give it to her, but I'm gonna try."

Rick smiled.

"You've gone soft Dixon."

"Bullshit," Daryl dismissed but his eyes betrayed him. "Go on," he told Rick, "got more work to do."

Rick didn't push the subject, dismissed himself with a nod, the one that carried so much; love, brotherhood, trust, promises that he didn't want to ever break. He left the house and started back towards his own home, hammering echoing behind him.


	10. Chapter 10

**Beth**

" _We only have what we give."_

* * *

It was her third week at Grady, the first-time Gorman had successfully managed to get inside her room and lock the door behind him. It was after he took what she'd worked so hard to preserve for someone who hung the stars for her that she met Mrs. Chastain. The woman spoke like her mamma, stern and southern, in sayings and word plays that sometimes hardly seemed to make any sense. She'd been a comfort to Beth though, brushing her hair back away from her face and helping her slide her flimsy scrub top back over her arms when she walked by the room and saw her; clothes pulled up around her neck and down by her ankles, crying and counting the fingertip shaped bruises on her wrists. She'd held her and rocked her and prayed with her.

" _Listen here girl, you gotta get yourself together. He's tryin' to flatten you and you gotta stay inflated. When the Lord come's a knockin' he'll get his. Until then you gotta stay inflated."_

Ruth Chastain had been a high school Algebra teacher for forty years in a county that neighbored hers, at a school Beth recognized the name of because Shawn's baseball team had played them once or twice in championship games. She was a stranger but somehow so familiar in such a foreign place. Ruth had been assigned a job in the doctor's office because she was good with numbers and mixing medications came easily enough to her. She played pleasant with Dawn and Gorman and the rest of the men and women who carried guns and thin smiles but always had something less than polite to say behind their backs. It was Ruth of course, who helped Beth and Noah orchestrate their final and finally successful escape. Beth had begged her to come with them, insisted they all could make it even though even she felt the lie in her throat.

 _"Beth Greene, I can see your nose growing, ain't no way these arthritic hips are making that drop, not alive anyway. You go, you go and you don't ever look back. Go find your sister, go find that man and fall off the face of the Earth, find a quiet place to be happy."_

It was impossible not to look back though, try as Beth had. She saw them in everything she did. There was Hank, the Iraq War veteran with one leg but biceps as big as trees who screamed in the night with terrors and Beth wasn't sure if they were from the war or the world that came after it. But he always smiled at her, slid her half of his rations when she was getting dizzy in the kitchen because Dawn had cut her portions after the first escape. Hailey, the nurse who played the 'I miss...' game with Beth ever chance they got, until the game grew less fun when they'd name off things like 'I miss showering without being watched', and 'I miss fresh air'. The list went on and on of the people she'd left behind when she careened down that elevator shaft. They weren't her family, not blood, not like those she had found her way back to. They were people though, good ones that the world needed not to be hidden away. In Alexandria, they had a good life, the kind where someone could find peace. The people who had tried to give her peace in such an awful place, they deserved a shot at that life too.

"You understand, right?" she asked into the dark, across the kitchenette table in the RV where she could just make out Daryl's profile as he absentmindedly loaded and reloaded his gun under the light of a flashlight he held between his teeth. He grunted a noise, something that she knew was a yes but noncommittal. He was standing by her, had been working relentlessly the last month with her to prepare the others for the coming fight, but he wasn't happy. "When we get home, me and you are gonna christen every room in that house."

She could see his lip twitch just in the slightest and took some small comfort before directing her attention out the window, where the scenery was flying by in a dark flash. Everything was slightly foggy except one slither of glass where she rested her forehead, the rest of the windows had been fortified with thick bullet proof glass scavenged from bank windows and mini market counters. The outside walls wore panes of sheet metal bolted to them. They'd transformed the old family vacation bus into a war machine. Rick was in the driver's seat, Michonne riding shotgun and silently resting. Aaron lay, resting his eyes, in the small hallway that led from the sitting area to the back bedroom where Sasha, Tara and Rosita had bunkered down. Behind them in the dark Carol trailed in a similar vehicle, full with her soldiers from the Kingdom. Three men from the Hilltop navigated a fortified school bus at the end of the convoy, empty and ready to transport those who would be displaced from Grady.

"Georgia state line about half an hour out," Rick announced into the dark and his voice echoed slightly in the walkie talkie he spoke into, "gonna pull over and cut lights for the night about five miles from there."

Something tight settled in her stomach and Daryl must have sensed it because he clicked his gun together for the last time and then tucked it away, killing the flashlight and reaching across the table for her hands.

"Hey," he whispered, intertwining their fingers, "ain't nothin' to be nervous about. We're ready."

She ran her thumbs up and down the calloused backs of his hands as if she was reading braille. The hands that had built her a home. _"Didn't build it, just ya know, remodeled it,"_ he'd corrected her humbly, blushing and shrugging after he'd taken his hands away from where they'd been covering her eyes. He'd put every inch of himself into the home and it was the most amazing thing she'd ever seen. He'd painted the bedroom walls her favorite shade of cherry red, with an antique wooden bedframe he'd found who knows where. The bookshelves were full to the brims with titles he'd been finding and collecting for some time. In the corner of the living room stood a piano and Beth had cried, buried her face against his heart and sobbed.

 _"I get what ya have to do, don't mean I like it, but I get it, hell probably more in love with ya because of it,"_ he'd told her, wiping tears from her cheeks with the sides of his hands, " _just wanted you to know what we have to come back to. A place for us, me and you, wanted to give you that. Thought it would make your dad happy, wherever he is ya know. To know you got a place of your own to be happy."_

Daryl always claimed to be shit with words but somehow the ones he picked always sounded so perfect.

"I know it's right," she promised, "I just…all these people, they believe in my cause so much. It's overwhelming to think about."

Of course, she worried, worried about how it would sit on her if they were to lose anyone in Atlanta. At Grady, there was an arsenal that even between their three communities they couldn't have dreamed up. Grady didn't have the bodies to man even a third of those weapons though. Every gun from Alexandria was armed by an experienced shooter, an experienced killer. Those in the RV and the other vehicles had all been volunteers, all signed up on their own accord for the mission. Like Beth they weren't content to turn a blind eye to conquerable evil.

"You're a leader Beth," she couldn't make out Daryl's face in the dark but she knew he was leaning further across the table, staring into her eyes, "have been for a long time. Were leadin' me, when we were out there, jus' me and you. Kept me alive, game me a mission."

Sometimes she was wistful for those days, just the two of them and the woods. Those days that Grady and Gorman and Atlanta took from them.

"Ready to let me lead you around for the rest of our lives?" she teased quietly and Daryl chuckled.

"Countin' on it. Be chasin my own tail without ya."

Outside the state lines Rick cut the RV, guided it smoothly into what had once been a rest stop parking lot. In the morning, they would hold a meeting, one of two more reviews of the final plan. Over the last four weeks Beth had worked tirelessly to relay the floor plans and watch schedules of the facility to her people as well as familiarizing them with all the main players. They'd all been informed that there were high ranking wards who would most likely be forced to fight and had agreed solemnly, that they needed to take out whoever aimed a weapon in their direction. The others would understand, and when the wards saw her, if they saw her, she knew that they would understand what was happening and begin to lay down arms. The cops needed to be terminated, in the fastest fashion possible.

In the morning, they would be heading back to Georgia. Not home, not anymore. Beth was never going to be able to take back what she'd lost there, she knew that. She could prevent others from losing it though and that would be enough. It would be enough for the good to win. And then she could go home and never look back; home to her quiet, happy place.


	11. Chapter 11

**AN** : So, I had a lot of trouble deciding who's POV this chapter should be in. Which is what led me to the idea of an inside perspective at Grady. I hope it worked!

Sgt. Bob Lampson

 _"We all have a Monster within; the difference is in degree, not in kind."_

* * *

The linoleum was shiny, so clean he could practically see his own face reflected by the toes of his boots. Bob Lampson was glad he couldn't, wasn't much for looking at himself in the mirror these days. His face was worn, mapped with lines that seemed to appear for every day since the beginning, since the after had begun.

He stood in the familiar attention stance, hands flat at his sides, eyes baring into the wall of the office. It had been a doctor's once; the cleaner white rectangles and squares on the cream wall were the places medical degrees and certificates had once hung, maybe family photos. Now the walls were clear, any signs of the former occupant disregarded down the elevator shaft that ate everything they didn't want to look at any longer in Grady Memorial Hospital. He traced the outline of one rectangle over and over with his eyes, pushing his vision not to fall to the older woman in a heap by his feet.

She was bent over in pain, laying on her side, the yellow sponge long disregarded in a wet puddle beside her. Her breathing was ragged, her eyes clenched shut. They would open to pained slits once and while and he refused to meet them. Ruth reminded him of his wife's grandmother, kind of painfully small town southern who always seemed to have the answer to any question. He'd always liked her, Dawn had always liked her, they were what she called a 'trustee ward' with special access to information and unsupervised work. Now her wrinkled skin was splotched black and blue, one hand fat and purple where it had been stomped on. When these wounds healed, new ones would come, just as they had for the months since the escape. His own boot had been one to crush some of those ribs.

"Sargent," the word escaped from her swollen lips in little more than a hiss, "pl…please."

Lampson counted the squares on the walls again. Every time his mind got to the number 12 he paused. His son would've been 12 on his last birthday; had a police themed party like every other one he'd always insisted on. His wife used to call him "Mr. Good Guy". She was almost annoyed with the way he was always on duty, missing movies because he stopped to help a motorist with their flat tire or stepping in to assist the restaurant management with a disruptive customer. She wasn't really annoyed though; his family had held him on a pedestal of integrity. That was before of course. Before he followed his duties to the hospital instead of back to his home, before he watched the Napalm bombs dropped and knew his wife and child were out there somewhere, dying alone on the city street.

"Stop talking and clean," he barked robotically.

"Lampson," Lt. Dawn Lerner's voice was loud and cold, announcing her presence behind him, "is our ward mouthing off?"

The 67-year-old woman's mouth was practically swollen shut.

"I think she's had enough."

As soon as the words slipped from his mouth Lampson winced.

"Is that so?" Dawn snapped into the side of his face, standing facing him with her hands clasped behind her back. "Because as I recall, Mrs. Chastain has a very heavy debt to repay."

It hadn't been hard to figure out the older woman had been the third conspirator in Beth and Noah's finale escape. With her inside knowledge of the officer's where abouts and easy ability to distract Dawn with discussion over medical inventory, she had helped them plan their exit down to the perfect second. She'd admitted as much when confronted, the sweet façade she wore of the agreeable granny finally crumbling. She'd spit in Dawn's face as they drug her to be tied down.

He nodded in Dawn's direction, took a step towards the old woman and glared down at her, used his boot to nudge her swollen hand.

"My office next," he ordered before turning from the room and heading down the hall. There was no choice in the matter. Good guys didn't exist anymore, he didn't get to play hero.

He stopped at his bedroom, threw upon a drawer to retrieve the crushed pack of cigarettes, palmed one and slipped his lighter into his shirt pocket. He made a bee line for the elevator lobby, the only place Dawn would allow smoking. She was keen on that, pretending old rules as such still meant anything. He'd never smoked before, never even considered it. However, he'd picked up far worse habits than smoking following the world's jolting shift.

If you stood close enough to the open shoot you could hear the echo of the dead groaning 8 floors down, waiting for their next meal to come careening down at them. He wasn't sure how Beth and Noah had managed to make it. The girl was good at fighting the dead, he'd gathered as much. Some of the people they brought in were barely scraping by out there, ones who had come from behind walls that had finally fallen. Some, like Beth, had something else in their eyes, something feral when you looked deep enough. It was the look of someone who had lived on the outside, who had slept, ate and breathed among the infected. That look never left. That look was what kept Beth alive no matter what kind of torture they inflicted upon her, that kept her posture solid long after Gorman decided to make her his personal pet project.

He was glad the other man was dead, glad the Greene girl had left him with a bullet in his head on her way out. Still, had he found her out there on the road Bob would have killed her. It was his duty, his debt. It was what kept him alive.

To make it out of the city, barefoot and armed with only one gun between the two of them, he had to give her credit. It had been a shock to see how far they'd made it when they came across Noah's corpse in the road, two counties outside the city limits. Beth wasn't there but he and Kramer had abandoned the search anyway, there was no way the girl could last alone in the woods. She had left in a bad state, that wrist hanging so unnaturally and one ankle barely able to hold her slight weight.

Ruth would be next, he knew that. There was no paying off this debt, Dawn would work her until she couldn't move. Then the wards would be lined up, forced to watch as the elderly woman had her knees kicked in and fell to her death. He might even be the one to deliver the final blow.

It wasn't until he took the first long drag that he felt the cool metal at the base of his neck, heard the familiar click of a weapon being cocked. His smoke dangled between his lips as he slowly raised his hands.

"Dawn?" he croaked and the menthol tumbled to the ground. He was sure that his superior had come to make it clear that his brief question of her judgement was not going to be tolerated any longer.

A heavy hand snaked around his body and released his sidearm from his holster and then growled. The voice did not belong to Dawn.

"Turn around."

He did so slowly, inching his feet around until the barrel of the gun was cool between his eyes.

The man before him was a stranger, messy brown hair and blue eyes like ice. He wore a ragged leather vest over a flannel, a crossbow slung over one shoulder.

"If you came to steal," he managed calmly, "there are a lot more than just me, all armed. This won't go well."

The man didn't speak, watched him with a tilt to his head like an animal watching its prey.

"From what I hear," he began, his accent telling Bob he had grown up outside the city, that rural Georgia drawl clinging to his words, "you're the one in the business of stealin', stealin' people that is."

"We help people," he argued, the lie tasting bitter, "rescue people on the outside."

"Rescue," the man weighed the word, pursing his lips in disagreement, "didn't know rescue meant rapin', killin', keepin' folks against their will. See my family, we ain't ok with what you do here. Heard a lot of stories."

And then, like the ceiling collapsing on him, Lampson knew who he was staring at.

"Beth," he whispered and those blue eyes turned colder if it was possible, a tension settling in the man's jaw.

"Don't even say her name," he pressed the gun hard into the space between Lampson's eyes, "I'll shoot you where you stand."

"She said you'd come," he managed between shaky breathes.

"I said stop talking about her," this time he was struck in the side, right at his ribs, with the butt of the gun. Lampson doubled over, his breath catching in his throat for a long moment.

"I ain't the only one here, lot more where I came from. They're already here, already inside. Any minute now you're gonna hear the shooting. You, you're gonna come with me and try to talk some of your men down. If they listen, I'm still gonna kill them, but maybe not you. If they listen, maybe at the end you get to keep breathin'."

There had been something about the girl, about the confidence in her eyes when she spoke, that had always brought about a rise of fear in his gut. He'd always known they'd made a mistake bringing her in, keeping her alive.

 _"When my people come…when he comes…you'll be sorry. You can't just steal people, we aren't things. People love us and if you think nobody is ever gonna come here lookin' for justice than you don't know where I come from."_

Beth had spoken that to him from her knees, where she knelt with her hands cuffed behind her back, forced to stare down into the black hole of the elevator shaft after her second escape attempt. Her eyes had been blackened, lip split down the center and he knew that Gorman had inflicted his own kind of personal punishment. Still, she'd held her head high as she spoke to his retreating back, practically spit it at him.

This man, with the icy eyes, scarred knuckles and gravel in his voice, he was the _him_ Beth had spoken of; the justice come knocking. In the old world, he was the kind of man Lampson would have gotten calls about, kind of ragged and suspicious in the wrong setting. Here, in this world, the man in the biker vest was the hero, the moral compass. Lampson was the evil and he knew it well, carried it like the weight of the world. Beth had known; had known that he had conceded to the darkness out of nothing more than weakness.

 _"You used to keep people safe, what happened to that? You should stop wearin' that uniform Sargent Lampson, you're a disgrace. Too afraid to make it on your own out there? I did, look at me. I made it out there and you couldn't."_

 _S_ he always said his name, all their names, like they were bile in her mouth.

"I'll do whatever you want," he promised, swallowing a lump in his throat, "but….Beth….she's not here, she didn't make it."

He waited for the blast, waited for the blissful end. Instead, the man almost grinned.

"Nah," he shook his head, "she is here."

Lampson felt his eyes widen. She had made it.

And then, with a deafening blast, the first gun shot rang out.

The man took him by the collar and began leading him out of the lobby, his weapon aimed before them. A girl seemed to appear out of nowhere, pretty and Latina with a hat pulled low over her eyes and an AK-47 in her arms. There was that look again, domesticated animal turned wild.

She looked him up and down with disgust and took note of his nametag.

"One down," she clicked her tongue and trained her gun on him and as they led him down the hall. In the rooms wards were cowering by their beds, some had crawled beneath them. Three more shots rang out. At the end of the hall, Licari came bounding around the corner. He was bleeding from the arm but still moving, he raised his weapon and aimed it in their direction. The man fired once and Licari was dead before he hit the ground, falling at an awkward angle.

"Stay in your rooms," the girl shouted into the open doors, "we aren't here to hurt you. We're with Beth, Beth Greene. We're going to rescue you."

She repeated the messaged as they took the hall slowly, echoing the name Beth Greene over and over. Beth, their folklore hero who had actually returned on a liberation mission.

There were dozens, survivors turned mercenaries with heavy artillery and homemade battle gear. The gun fire was constant now and as they entered the south wing through double doors, the man and girl dropped to a crouch dragging him with them. The hall was littered with bodies, Karmer, Peterson and Parker all with bullets through the head.

"There's three holed up," a man at the end of the hall shouted down in their direction, "in the office."

"That's Dawn's office," he managed, "she's not gonna back down, she won't care about me."

"Sucks for her," the girl spat and then they were dragging him down the hall, taking position beside the man who had been speaking. He too had cold blue eyes and an impressive silver revolver with a homemade silencer screwed to the barrel.

"We were told to spare you, if you we could," he directed at Lampson, "were told you were the most reasonable man here."

"She'll shoot me before she fires at you, she knows now I lied, lied when I said I found Beth's body out there in the road."

"Yea well," the man shrugged, "like I said, if we could."

And then the hallway was engulfed in a blast of smoke. The gunfire was constant, round and after round exploding and a constant ring ran thru his ears. He could hear screaming, cries of pain and terror and as the smoke began to clear more bodies were clear; Gregson, Campbell. And there was Dawn, bleeding from a wound in her stomach but still alive, blinking up at the man in the leather vest who stood over her, her wrists bound in front of her with her own handcuffs.

She was trying to say something but her mouth had filled with blood, gurgling out inaudible words. The hospital had fallen into a silence except for the quiet cries from inside the wards rooms. More and more of the strangers began to filter into the hall, some injured and clutching wounds but all on their feet. An older woman with short cropped gray hair moved aside to allow a slight blonde figure to make her way to the front of the crowd.

Beth was no longer the frail, starving thing she'd been when she disappeared into that elevator shaft. She looked strong and healthy with a long, bloody hunting knife grasped in one hand and a heavy glock in the other. She tucked the gun into her waistband, those eyes focused only on Dawn's form.

The man in the vest stepped beside her, one of his hands resting on the back of her neck. He, the man Beth had always told them would come, pressed a kiss to her temple.

"It's done," he told the side of her face, "she's bleedin' out. She can't hurt nobody else Beth."

They all watched as Dawn took one last wheezing breath and the trembles in her body seized. Beth's eyes slowly drifted upwards and fell upon him.

"Lampson," she sighed, "I hate to say I told you so."

"Please," he felt himself beg, "don't spare me, please end it."

He contemplated eating his own gun every day, but as usual, he was too weak. Too weak to face the hell he knew waited for people like him.

The people in the hall were all looking at him with the same thing, a mix of disgust and pity. They'd all done what he couldn't, survived on the outside, managed to remain on the right side.

"We're going to take the wards," Beth informed simply, "we're going to take them to the places we live, where people live free and safe. We built a world and it's a good one. It's what you could have done here."

On the linoleum, Dawn's corpse began to reanimate, her fingers opening and closing. Before the first growl could slip from between her dead lips Beth buried her knife in Dawn's skull, a guttural war cry slipping from between her lips as she did it. And then the Latina girl's gun butt connected with his head and everything went black for Lampson.

When he woke the first thing he noticed was the crisp chill of fresh air. He could feel dewy grass beneath his back and when he opened his eyes the sun made them burn.

His uniform shirt was gone, replaced with a blue scrub top. The woods were heavy on either side of the dirt road and beside him lay a long knife and a gallon jug of water. Under the water was a folded piece of paper. He read it, let the paper fall to the dirt and glanced around at the overwhelming miles of forest.

 _Lampson,_

 _When you stopped searching for me and lied to Dawn, you gave me the chance to make it home. So, I'm giving you one. This is your shot to be brave. There's still a life to be lived in this world, I hope you find it._

 _Beth Greene_


	12. Chapter 12

An: I am so sorry this story has fallen to the wayside recently. I started a new career in March and have been in a pretty intensive training program that required a lot of studying for 3 months. I will be in training and on probation for the next four but things are finally starting to ease up to where I will hopefully have a bit more free time. But anyway, here goes nothing. This chapter will set up probably 2 or 3 more before this story is concluded and I can start publishing a few other half done things I've been working on.

* * *

 **BETH**

" _They thought they could bury us, they didn't know we were seeds."_

The paper had been folded and refolded so many times it was almost perforated at the creases. Yellow flowers danced along the borders of the stationary, 'REMINDERS' spelled out across the top margin in a pre-printed loopy font. The notepad had probably belonged to some house wife once, the bullet point lines used to keep track of things needed from the market or denote special-events at school or trip slip due dates. It had probably belonged to a woman who doted on her children; maybe a home maker or the busy kind of mom she always imagined Maggie would be, darting between jobs and parent teacher conferences and seamlessly keeping track of everything at once. Beth grinned a little to herself, she hadn't been all that wrong in her predictions about her sister. Maggie may not have been carpooling between an office but she was leading a community of survivors with her son on one hip and a machete on the other.

Their mama used to have tablets just like the one her paper had come from, always making herself lists but forgetting to read them anyway. Sometimes, when she was very small her mamma would write sweet notes on pretty paper and tuck them into her lunch bag. " _I hope the world is as sweet to you today as you are to it Beth Greene_!"

Beth had always wanted to be her mamma when she grew up, bustling around with babies at her ankles and forgotten shopping lists tucked in her back pockets. She'd pen quick encouragements for her kids, maybe snippets of love songs for her husband slipped in his cooler or the brim of his hat.

The list smoothed out before her on the kitchen table was a kind she'd never have imagined writing. Her lip tugged into a small smile as she traced Daryl's chicken scratch at the top of the page with a finger, ' _Things_ _To_ _Put_ _Away'_. She'd been back for three weeks the night they wrote it, the night she was on her knees in Rick's basement shaking at the shoulders after waking up with Daryl's arm around her and scratching and shoving and screaming him away. By the time she'd backed herself into a corner with balled up fists reality had come crashing back around her. He sat on the edge of the bed, her fingernails imprinted on his cheek and a look in his eye that made her buckle to the floor, as if she'd just reaffirmed every voice in his head that he had never deserved to touch her in the first place.

He'd pushed it down though and came for her. That's what Daryl did of course, put her first. He stalked across the room, throwing open drawers until he was holding the long pad of paper and had a pencil behind his ear. He folded onto the floor in front of her, his knees against hers. He scrawled the title, underlining it angrily before scribbling the first bullet.

 _The smell of the cell._

He'd pressed the paper and pencil into her hand, no words between them. With trembling fingers and tears falling over her lip she wrote the next.

 _The weight of his body on mine._

They'd gone back and forth for hours, filling up every line and margin with everything they'd both been dragging around like ankle weights. Now the list stayed with her, or stayed somewhere in the safety of their home. The things were there, always with them, but manageable. Somehow, there in her delicate cursive and Daryl's almost illegible scratch and folded into a neat little square, those things held less weight.

The tea kettle whistled to life and she stood, refolding the paper and slipping it into her back pocket. She moved the kettle to a cool burner and opened the cabinet, staring into the odd array of dishes they had accumulated. Beth was on her tippy toes, reaching for the silly Las Vegas mug Daryl had brought her home from a run, when she heard the front door open.

"Beth?"

She froze at the sound of Aaron's voice, slowly lowering herself back to her heels and cupping the mug to her chest. He'd been so proud of himself when he presented it to her, wearing a wry grin and recalling some conversation they'd had in passing one night about places she wished she gotten to see before the world went to hell in a hand basket. Some painfully domestic conversation shared over something as unaverage as packing emergency bags to be kept in their hall closet; two backpacks equipped with change of clothes, nonperishables, ammo and first aid kits. She called them 'just in case bags' and even though he kept insisting they weren't needed, Daryl had pacified her and agreed anyway. Just in case.

"In the kitchen," she announced, trying to keep her voice steady.

Four days had passed, only four in what should have been ten to twelve. She hadn't wanted him to go of course, had wanted with every fiber of her being to stomp her feet and beg him not to. That would have been unfair, completely selfish after the way he'd assisted her in the mission to Grady against his better judgement. Plus, Daryl needed the purpose of a job, not to mention letting his tracking skills go to waste on nothing but deer and rabbits for their stomachs would have been a sin. There could have been others like her out there, fighting so hard to hide and not knowing that really what they needed was to be found. And Beth knew that the woods were as much a part of Daryl as she was. He needed the freedom of the wilderness just as badly as she did the release of her fingers against the piano and she understood, as long as he came home.

She could feel Aaron step just inside the threshold of the kitchen and registered the echo of a second pair of footsteps behind his. Beth turned, still griping her tacky mug and squared her jaw.

Aaron wore a bloody gash across his chin, his skin darkened with a layer of sweat and dirt. His clothes were battered, his jacket torn and his hands hovered in the air as if she might collapse or attack. The way they had the day he found her, the day he'd taken her home.

Over his shoulder, Rick's face watched her with a seriousness etched into it she couldn't stomach. The two of them were regarding her with solemn lines to their mouths, like two Majors come to tell a war wife she was now a widow.

"Rick?" she heard her voice squeak out, looking right thru Aaron.

"We don't know," he explained steadily, stepping around the other man, "he and Aaron ran into some trouble with a herd, got separated at an old setup a few hours from here…nothing is for sure Beth."

"You left him?" She didn't mean to sound cold, didn't mean the accusation to her tone but she didn't apologize for it either. Aaron's face washed in guilt, his hands falling at his sides.

"No, Beth I…we came upon a small settlement, some people who'd been hauled up in a gated apartment complex since the very beginning. We were just watching, observing from the woods for a day, trying to decide if we wanted to make contact," his voice hitched, eyes fell to the floor, "we watched the herd come in, two nights ago right around six. We watched the gates fall and there were so many…"

"Aaron," she interrupted, her voice finding strength, "where is Daryl?"

"He went in…when the herd started to thin, he went in to try to find survivors...there were kids, he said he had to. I…I stayed back on the hill, he told me to. I listened, was covering him with the long gun...I saw him go into the building but he never came back out. I tried to go in after but they had started to build again, there were so many I couldn't get anywhere near the building Beth. God, I tried," Aaron swiped at his eyes, "I tried."

For a long moment, the silence was heavy in the kitchen. The little kitchen Daryl had painted yellow just for her.

"When do we leave?" she croaked out, once again finding only Rick's eyes.

"Few hours, Run Squad 1 is collecting supplies and loading up the RV now" he promised, not a hint of hesitation and not even a dare at suggesting she stay behind. He stepped closer, resting a strong hand on her shoulder. "Daryl knows how to survive Beth, he's holed up in there somewhere, just waiting for his moment. Wouldn't be surprised if we run into him on the road, rescue himself before we even get there. You know him."

The room was swirling around her as she mutely nodded, of course she knew him. God how she loved him for being the kind of man to run towards a herd of walkers in the name of maybe saving a child's life. But God how sometimes she wished they just got to be selfish.

"I'll meet you out there," she nodded at both men, arms crossed across her chest and the now cold tea on the stove forgotten. Rick gave her shoulder one last squeeze as he turned to leave, guiding Aaron and the apologies stuttering on his tongue towards the front door.

Beth worked quietly, tidying the kitchen before retreating to the bedroom. She changed her clothes, disregarding the frilly off the shoulder blouse she'd indulged in that morning and pulling on a practical long sleeved tee. She slid her feet into her boots, hooked her revolver holster around her waist and fastened her knife on one thigh. The entire time her stomach continued to tighten, feeling as if every muscle she had was clenching in around one another. She hovered at their bedroom door, inhaling the way the room still smelled of leather and cigarettes.

As Beth retrieved her 'just in case' pack from the hall closet she was never more aware of the weight of the list in her back pocket.


End file.
